


We'll Build Our Altar Here

by astoryaboutwar



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Badass Rhys, Hate Sex, Is anyone really surprised though, Jack is a dick, M/M, Ohhhh there will be so much angst, Plotty, Revenge, Rhys is out for blood hohoho, Romance, There will be Plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 06:59:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5119307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astoryaboutwar/pseuds/astoryaboutwar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He'll betray anyone for the right price," his mother had told him. </p>
<p>Rhys wishes now he'd listened. It's not easy trying to stay one step ahead of the man who's already sold you out once and left you to die, but he'll have to try.</p>
<p>(Or: AU where Rhys grew up as the heir to one of the galaxies' largest weapons manufacturing firms before being sold out by Jack and left for dead. Seven years later, Rhys is working as a mechanic at Scooter's when Jack shows up demanding answers to secrets best left buried.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. so show me where you fit

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first foray into the Borderlands/TFTBL fandom, whoops. All aboard the train of madness that is Handsome Jack/Rhys, I say. This'll be a loooong ride.
> 
> **I'm going to ask that all constructive criticism please be _withheld_.** I've had some very, very poor experiences with it in the past, and I don't wish to chance encountering that sort of thing again. I write purely for fun and to relax, not for personal development, and I want this to be a space where I can leave my writing without fear of reprisal.
> 
> Comments are, of course, still always welcome! If you're so inclined, I can also be found on Tumblr [here](http://astoryaboutwar.tumblr.com/).
> 
> (This fic has not been beta-ed.)

It’s been exactly 7 years since Rhys was left for dead in Skag Gully. 

He’d been left with nothing more than a repeater pistol with half a magazine, a bottle of water, and the clothes on his back. He’d lost his eye in the scuffle, and by the end of the second night wandering Skag Gully, he’d lost an arm too.

So if anyone were inclined to ask him: no, he doesn’t have much love for Pandora. But he’s got more going for him in Pandora than he has in any other place in the galaxies, so he’s still here, seven years later.

Scooter’s garage is silent in the twilight hours. They don’t get many customers past eleven at night, though they occasionally get a couple when the Purple Skag shuts at two. But tonight - it’s looking to be a dead night for business.

It’s a good time for Rhys to service his mechanical arm free from interruptions, so he’d taken off and begun work on that. An hour and change later, his wrists are black with grease and he’s got a few smudges on his shirt and temple.

He wonders if the con Fiona and Sasha were being all hush-hush over went successfully. They’d left for parts unknown with August a couple of days ago, mysterious case in tow. It’s not like them to keep things from him, and worry sits poorly with him. It makes him antsy. Restless. Liable, he sees now, to go slightly overboard with what should really just be a routine maintenance.

Rhys eyes the debris that trails from his arm on the counter top where it’s set. He hadn’t meant to completely overhaul the hologram projector in his palm computer, but from the way things are looking…He glances at the ECHO terminal on the counter to his right. It’s fine, he has time. It’s barely gone three in the morning - too early for Janey to be coming in for the morning shift, likely too late for stragglers to be wandering in.

If he’s going to do this, Rhys decides, he’s going to do this properly, and for that he needs his precision tools. It’s probably time to upgrade the light and data processor too, anyway. He dips under the counter for his toolkit, unfurling the leather case where his tools are carefully kept. He’d been lucky that Scooter had some loose precision tools for his arm lying around. The screws and bolts that fastened his arm weren’t standard issue, and what Scooter couldn’t help scrounge up, Rhys had to fashion himself. 

Still, it’s served him well so far. Sasha had offered to help him find a proper set a few years ago, something about being able to smuggle one in from Helios via a contact-of-a-contact-of-a-contact, but Rhys had declined. It was too much hassle to replace something that wasn’t broken, merely unconventional. 

Rhys picks out the 3-tool from the selection, setting to work on the data processor. It’s the bit that requires the most concentration and precision - it’s the only part that’s irreplaceable. If the projector or light processor breaks beyond repair, he can easily cull a new one from spare ECHO terminals and even old Atlas pads. The data processor, however, is Hyperion-issue, mined and repurposed from his old ECHO device. The processors from newer pads can’t be retrofitted to fit because of circuitry compatibility issues and data-locking, a feature only introduced by Hyperion five years back. Handsome Jack and his paranoia to thank once again, whoop-dee-fucking-doo. 

It’s pushing four when Rhys hears the sound of vehicles roaring by outside, but he pays it little mind. Sound carries great distances in the flats of Pandora, especially at night. It’s unlikely drifters will stop by at this hour, at any rate. He’s nearly done with the upgrades for the light processor, the pilfered parts of scrap he’s snatched from various heaps around the garage littering the counter around him. By this point, he’s basically got grease and engine oil all over him. 

With a pair of tweezers, he carefully manoeuvres the glass surface of the central chassis in place, making sure it sits over the processor exactly right. If it’s even slightly tilted, the holographic projections and computer screen will end up skewed, and it’s annoying as hell to fix. 

The vehicles he heard are still going at whatever it is they’re doing, drawing even closer to Scooter’s. Knowing his luck, he wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be a bunch of psychos bloodthirsty and fresh off a murder rally. He sighs. Not that they aren’t always bloodthirsty anyway.

Rhys sets to work reassembling the various components of his arm, polishing cloth in one hand. He’s just begun polishing off the forearm plate when several cars make the turn off for the garage and rumble into view. He sighs again, eyeing the detritus of his maintenance, wondering how quickly he’ll be able to put his arm back together and how slapdash a job it’s going to be. It’s not as bad as it could be, he decides. At least he’s already got all the delicate parts back in.

Hastily screwing plates and fixing wires back in place, Rhys is working on the receiving mechanism in his shoulder socket in preparation for the arm going back in when three black Lancers come roaring in, brakes squealing as they stop in a line, all queued up. 

Setting the screwdriver in his hand down, he sits back slowly and reaches for the gun he keeps tucked away under the counter with his left hand. There’s something _off_ about this. The Lancers are heavily modified, for one, the windows entirely tinted black. They’re also too _clean_ for Pandora, where the constant kick up of dirt and dust from wheels mean that a vehicle’s paint job is always scuffed and muddied.

Rhys activates his ECHO eye, the tension in his gut coiling tighter when the feedback tells him that the Lancers have data-blockers wired in. He’s getting no useful information out of the scan. It’s a long second before the passenger door of the Lancer in the middle swings open. The figure that steps out is mostly obscured by the car door, but Rhys can clearly see booted feet on the ground.

More specifically, _Hyperion security_ booted feet.

The security guard emerges from behind the door, helmeted head turning swiftly as he scans the room. He seems to be satisfied with what he sees, and turns back to nod at whoever it is that’s waiting inside the Lancer. 

Rhys’s ECHO eye is still whirring away, scanning the scene as quickly as it can. The security thug’s Hyperion, but not _any_ old Hyperion grunt - the gun he’s wielding is the _Destroyer combat rifle_. Even if you’re lucky enough to stumble across a gun vendor who stocks the Destroyer, you’d probably never be able to afford it. Rhys’s inner nerd itches to walk over, reach out, and stroke it. That baby’s worth well over a million credits. Whoever this thug’s with is _important._

More security guards emerge from the other two Lancers, fanning out around Scooter’s garage. A quick glance tells him there are easily ten of them, all armed with Destroyers. Rhys is sitting in the presence of items that cost more than the entire worth of all the possessions of Hollow Point’s inhabitants combined.

“Something I can help you with, guys?” Rhys calls out, swallowing nervously. He can probably take four down before they know what’s hit them, five if his aim is true and luck is good. Ten, however, is a little out of his skill range, even for him. The helmets the guards are wearing glint unpromisingly in the low street lamplight, and none of them respond. 

His attention is caught by the back door of the middle Lancer being thrown open. There’s a noticeable shift in the posture of the guards. They stand straighter, hold their guns tighter. Rhys flicks his eyes back to the open door, uneasy.

A pair of red sneakers hit the ground, and the unease turns into a grey sludge of dread he can taste at the back of his throat. The sneakers round the Lancer’s door. 

Rhys’s ECHO eye scans the newcomer as soon as they step into view. He’s gripping his gun so hard he’s pretty sure the grip pattern’s embedded on his palm now. 

The first time Rhys sees Jack in exactly seven years, it’s through a filter of information from his ECHO eye feedback:

_‘Handsome Jack, CEO of Hyperion. Richer than you, smarter than you, better-looking than you, and entirely above your pay grade.’_

He’s got his gun pointed straight at Jack without even knowing it. Rhys can vaguely hear the guards shouting at him, a multitude of guns being trained at him in the span of a few seconds.

“Hey, ladies, calm your friggin’ little heads,” Jack calls out to the guards, mismatched eyes never once leaving Rhys. “This kitten’s backed up, he’s got no claws.”

Suddenly, violently, incandescently livid, Rhys shifts his stance, moves his arm, and without looking, fires twice. Two guards to his left slump to the floor, perfect bullet holes through their heads. There are furious yells from the other guards, some drawing closer.

Jack raises a warning hand to them, eyebrows raised. He lets out a low whistle.

“Well, pumpkin, someone’s been practicing their aim all this while.” Jack gives him a slow once-over. “Miss me, Rhysie?”

Rhys’s teeth are gritted together, blood and adrenaline and fury thrumming through his veins. “How _dare,“_ he bites out, “How dare you come here, stand in front of me, and even _think_ you can talk to me after everything you’ve done.”

Jack’s gaze darkens. “Yeah, okay, it’s going to be like that, huh.” He signals to the guards, two of whom split off from the rest and climb into the last Lancer, which reverses out from the garage and hares off. “Look,” Jack says, turning his attention back to Rhys, “Here I was, hoping we could conduct this conversation like civilised men, but it looks like you’re not willing to do your part, so.” He pulls out an ECHO, calling up a projection of a Lancer in motion down a map of Hollow Point. The Lancer’s headed towards - _no._ No. No. _No._

Rhys seethes. “You bastard. You _skag shit._ ” 

Jack spares him a glance. “Eh, I’ll give you this, you’re still pretty sharp after living with these savages all these years.” He taps away at the ECHO, and the projection switches to first-person view. The Lancer’s slowing down now, making a familiar turn-off down a cluttered alley where caravans are haphazardly parked. More importantly, where _their_ caravan is parked. 

“Here’s how this is going to work, pumpkin. You come with me, and I won’t order these nice gentlemen to shoot your two little friends. They’ve already cost me one - fake!- Vault key and ten million credits today, and I’m not the most forgiving sort of person, am I, Rhysie?” There’s a hard glint in Jack’s eye, his mercurial anger sharp like broken glass. “So whaddaya say?”

It’s no choice at all. Rhys would give his life for Fiona and Sasha. He lowers the gun, tucking it away in the holster under his vest. Jack watches him put it away and shrugs, leaning back against the Lancer to fully take him in with the distraction of the gun gone. 

Rhys notes the way his eyes go straight to his mechanical arm lying prone on the counter, bottle of grease and toolkit laid out around it. He picks his arm up, checking the bend of the joints to make sure his hasty assembling hadn’t damaged anything, before setting it to his shoulder socket. Bracing against the counter, he pushes the arm in, turning it in the socket till he hears a faint click to know it’s correctly plugged in. Satisfied, Rhys boots the arm up with a quick command via his ECHO eye.

As the arm initialises, Rhys shuts off the scanning programme. It’s useless here, anyway. Whatever Jack doesn’t want him knowing will be kept behind firewalls too complex and deep to hack without direct server access. And what Jack doesn’t mind him knowing is likely trivial and unhelpful.

He’s fully aware that Jack is watching him throughout all this. Looking back at Jack, he catches a glimpse of his expression, dark and almost pained, before it snaps back to its veneer of cockiness and vague inscrutability. 

“After you, cyborg man,” Jack says, gesturing to the Lancer. Rhys slides his maintenance tools into a trouser pocket, hand coming up to brush reassuringly against the repeater pistol tucked in its holster. Jack’s ECHO pad is still broadcasting the video feed from the team he’d dispatched to their caravan. Camera still in first-person view, it doesn’t take a genius to see that the guards are watching their caravan from the car, on standby awaiting orders. 

Rhys steps out from behind the counter, stubbornly refusing to look at Jack. Instead, he turns his mind to trivial things, like whether Janey will think he skipped out on his shift early, whether Scooter’ll be able to handle all the jobs that are in between just him and Janey, whether the new parts he’d ordered for the shop’s terminal will arrive while he’s gone. It’s easier to keep his feet moving if he doesn’t think about where he’s headed. Or _who_ he’s headed to.

Coming to a stop before the Lancer, Rhys takes a deep breath, and can’t help but shoot a quick glance at Jack. 

“Well?” Jack questions, noticing Rhys’s gaze. “We don’t have all day here, kitten.” He jerks his chin towards the car. 

Clearing his throat, Rhys turns slightly to face him. “What do you want? It’s been seven years. What could you possibly want from me now?”

Jack sighs dramatically, waving at the guards behind them to get into the Lancers. That done, he presses a button on his ECHO, opening a communication line to the team on watch at their caravan. “Drama’s done, you can come back now. We’re back to base in five. Be here or I’ll use you for rakk bait.” 

When all of the guards have piled back in, he angles his body back towards Rhys, one hand coming up to rest against the roof of the car, caging him in with his body. 

“Rhys, Rhys, Rhys,” he purrs. “Ah, look at you, still so bitter. Time heals and all that shit, didn’t you get the memo?” Jack gives his head a quick tilt, thinking. “Eh, probably not, actually, that memo was only for middle management. But! To the point.” Hand coming up to point for emphasis, “ _You_. Have. Something. Of. Mine.” His index finger pokes Rhys with every word. “What’s the deal with that, huh?” 

Rhys is gaping. “You’re here about S&S? Seriously?” He runs an agitated hand through his hair. “There’s nothing left of that that you haven’t already stripped down and sold for scraps.” Rhys laughs acidly. “I don’t have anything left from S&S, Jack. You took _everything._ ”

Unimpressed, Jack leans in closer. “Oh, I don’t think so, kitten. It’s taken me a while to dig through the mess you made of the archives, but I know now, and you’re going to tell me where it is.”

“Where _what_ is?” 

“Project Titan.”

It’s possible that all the blood in Rhys’s body has frozen. It’s also possible that this is all a really bad dream after a wild night at the Purple Skag, but…No. Rhys can hope, though.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’d cleaned out the files himself. It’d been a rush job, sure, but Rhys had been _so sure_ that he’d gotten everything. How the hell had Jack even _heard_ of Titan?

“Uh uh uh,” Jack coos warningly. “Come now, Rhysie, you know I can’t stand lying idiots.” 

Unable to meet his eyes, Rhys turns away to look blankly out into the bleak street. Hooking a finger under his chin, Jack forces his gaze back to him. 

“See, when I got control of S&S, I had a little dig around the R&D files. I figured they’d be a good place to start, you know? You were always so neat, so _organised._ ” He makes hand-wavy motions. “It’s great, the OCD’s dream archive, all alphabetised and colour-coded and all your snazzy touches.”

Rhys’s breath hitches at the point of contact, Jack’s hand coming to rest low on his neck, an anchor and a threat.

“So I leave it to IT to sort through, because that’s what you hire peons for, right? But they’re busy with projects from the crushing of Atlas, from the Vaults, from Hyperion’s expansion, so it’s not exactly high priority.” Jack’s voice drops an octave. “Imagine my surprise, then, when I get a report from those nerds five years later that there’s a mess of information in a very specific data point.” He spreads his hands, fanning them out. Mindblown. “They dig and dig and dig, and hey, it’s _looks_ like file corruption, but there’s something missing. And they can’t figure out what it is, except they keep running into this one word: _Titan_. I kick them out, take a look at the files myself. And then I remember.”

Stepping back, Jack’s profile is sharply silhouetted by the low lighting of the garage and street. “You remember that conference on Eden-5? When you were at that talk with that Jakobs flunky I had a chat with your mother about some Atlas rumours. Utter bullshit, I told her. They said Atlas was working on a project to summon and hold a Vault. The Gortys Project.” 

It’s hard to breathe, and Rhys has to consciously force himself to do so. He’s trembling with rage, with grief, with a whole gamut of emotions and memories he hasn’t had to face in a long time.

“Good lady, your mother. She snorted when I told her, and she said, and I quote,” Jack holds up both hands, fingers crooked in inverted commas, “ ‘It’s embarrassing when these idiots overreach and think to challenge the titans of the industry.’ The _titans_ of the industry, pumpkin. S &S had their Vaults, so I knew you obviously had some hush-hush R&D shit on it.” 

“Stop,” Rhys says, the word sliding out on a quavering breath. “I don’t - I don’t know -”

“Not done here, kitten.” There’s a thread of anger in Jack’s tone, and Rhys thinks of Fiona and Sasha and the Lancer still at large. He quietens.

“So I track down this old geezer from S&S R&D, Jenkins or something, and we, ah, have a _talk._ The fella says he doesn’t know much, just that he remembers dear old Sarah shuttling out to Hunter’s Gore, _with you,_ a few times a week for this thing called _Project Titan._ Very secret, top-level clearance, obviously Vault-related. And _then_ he says you made trips to Pandora too. _My_ Pandora. Not that he knew much more than that, so it was to the skags with him.” Jack waves a hand dismissively.

Dr. Gareth Jenkins. Rhys remembers him. He’d been one of the newer faces in R&D at the time. Not outstandingly brilliant or outrageously eccentric, so he’d sort of just blended into the masses of intelligent people. They’d spoken once or twice, Rhys thinks, probably about quarterly reports. 

“You see where this leaves me, Rhysie? You’re the last S&S man standing, you’ve got information I need, _and_ you’ve got something I want stashed away on _my_ planet.”

It’s too much to take in at once. There’s the knowledge that everything Rhys did to destroy and hide Project Titan failed because of an offhand comment from his long-dead mother, because he was careless in covering his tracks, because Jack was ruthless once he’d sunk his teeth into something. There must be _something_ he can do.

Rhys licks his parched lips, eyes intent on Jack. “I want your word,” he says. “I go with you, you leave Fiona and Sasha alone. And once we’re done with this, I want safe passage for all of us to Eden-6. Those are my terms.”

Jack leans back, surveying him, one hand propped up against the door of the Lancer. There’s a ghost of a smirk on his face. “Not that you’re in any position to be making demands, but sure, pumpkin, whatever helps you sleep better at night.” Straightening, he slaps the door emphatically. “Now get in, we’re leaving this shithole.”

With a backwards glance at the garage, Rhys clambers in. He’s immediately hit by the coolness of the interior, the air soft and filtered. There’s a privacy screen in the Lancer, rolled all the way up. It’s quiet but for the muted whoosh of the A/C and the rumbling of the engine.

Settling into the right passenger seat, Rhys keeps an eye on Jack as he slides into the seat next to him and shuts the door. Rapping his knuckles against the privacy screen, the Lancer pulls out of Scooter’s.

As they navigate the twisting alleys of Hollow Point, headed towards the exit, Rhys swallows hard, fingers digging into his thigh. 

It’ll be _fine,_ he promises himself. He’s survived being stranded in the badlands of Pandora, he survived his arm being chewed off, he survived getting his eye impaled on the bad end of a stun baton. He can survive this. Breathing out slowly in an attempt to calm his nerves, he worries at his lip.

All he needs to do is find a way to make sure Jack _never_ finds out the truth behind Project Titan. 

There are reams upon reams and terabytes upon terabytes of information they collated from the Project, but nothing about _what_ it actually was. Rhys just needs to find a way to appease Jack with that _without_ letting him in on the true nature of the Project itself.

It shouldn’t be too hard, really. It’s not, you know, as if Project Titan was an actual person. 

It’s not as if Rhys _is_ Project Titan. 

Piece of cake.

(Rhys’ll get back to you on his funeral plans.)

 


	2. we won't go slow

They'd had some good times, don't get him wrong. The beginning was full of lingering looks, with sly smiles and hushed, unforced laughter over candlelit, intimate dinners. 

It'd been perfect, for a while. Rhys hadn't been able to believe his luck. He wasn't low enough on self-esteem to think he was an absolute write-off in the looks department, but he never, in a million years, imagined he'd catch the eye of someone as illustrious as Handsome Jack.

Of course, Hyperion then wasn't the omnipresent Hyperion it is now, and Handsome Jack hadn’t been Handsome with the capital H. Jack'd only been CEO for a couple of years before they met. Hyperion's hegemony had not yet been complete. Atlas was still around then, as was Jakobs, Torgue, Tediore and the rest. 

And S&S Munitions. That'd been around too.

It's hard to remember all this without flinching. He hasn't thought about this in such depth in years; only ever in passing. They hadn't taken his gun before bundling him into the Lancer with Jack; now, Rhys draws his repeater pistol out from its holster under his jacket. The signature S&S yellow and black paint job is faded with age, the manufacturer's logo barely visible from the amount of wear it's been put through. 

Next to him, Jack watches, body reclining laconically against the leather seats. The interior of the car is dark, the tinted windows dimming what light might have shone through even further. 

There was no need for Jack to worry, after all. If Rhys shot him, the guards in the cars trailing after would make back for Hollow Point and execute the entire settlement. They'd probably draw out Fiona and Sasha's deaths and make him watch.

It’s difficult to admit to himself how well he knows Jack. He knows him like the back of his hand, like the way Pandoran sun burns ruthlessly in midday heat, like the aftertaste of gunpowder from a firefight. It's maudlin business all round.

The gun in his hand is well-oiled and well cared for. Rhys checks the magazine, flicking the safety on and off in a bout of nerves. His mother would have his hide if she knew this was what her gun safety lessons had come down to.

"It's a good make," Jack offers, eyes hooded, expression shielded by the dark.

"The Nasty Gemini,” Rhys allows. "We sold over 20,000 of these." He turns the gun around in his hand. "The mark-two designs for these had the best accuracy and fire rate for its type on the market."

It goes without saying that the gun he's holding is probably one of the last of its kind left on Pandora. Guns don't last long out here, not without constant care and maintenance, and no run-off-the-mill bandit would have time to treat a Nasty Gemini with the amount of servicing needed to keep it going for the long haul. Far easier to simply get a new gun. A newer, shinier, fancier _Hyperion_ gun.

Rhys holsters the repeater, sitting back in his seat and placing his hands on his knees, fingers tapping nervously before he forces himself to still them. He turns to look out the window, the scorching badlands flying by in a whiz of yellow. Finally, he exhales, the puff of breath loud enough to break the silence.

“Where are you taking me?” he asks.

“Hyperion camp,” Jack supplies unhelpfully.

Rhys rolls his eyes, returning to stare out the window. “You need to fix the issue with the sighting in the mark-nines,” he tells Jack, refusing to turn to look at him. He will not give him the victory of knowing how much this hurts. “You shouldn’t have switched it out with the Tediore sight.”

Jack’s brows furrow. “What, for the Gemini? The boys down in Testing said it made for better balance.” 

Rhys scoffs. “Sure, at the expense of putting aim three point four degrees off centre.” Unable to resist, he turns to eye Jack. “Great hires you’ve got up there.”

Relaxed in his seat, Jack shoots him a long, appraising look. “Yeah? And what would you know about it?”

Snorting now, Rhys can’t quite keep his tone from going tart. “I designed the Gemini, genius.”

Jack has one elbow propped up against the back of the seat, hand steepled at his temple. “Huh,” he says slowly, expression considering. “Okay. Walk me through the solution.”

For an intense, excruciating moment, Rhys can almost believe the last seven years didn’t happen. The look Jack’s giving him is the exact expression he used to have on his face whenever they’d worked through the night on R&D blueprints and Rhys pointed out something he’d missed. Tearing his eyes from Jack, Rhys breathes in deeply through his nose. 

 _God_. He swears he can almost smell the faintest hint of the floral freshener that Hennings, the head of site maintenance, would insist all cleaners spray in the labs at the end of each day. The recollection fades, and all he’s left being able to detect is the slight smokiness of gunpowder, layered under a richer, darker musk. All Jack. 

God _damn_ it. What the fuck was he doing back in Rhys’s life?

“Yeah,” Rhys mutters, “I’d rather not.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Rhys thinks he sees Jack flinch, surprise, anger, and something skirting hurt flitting across his face. When he turns to look at him fully, Jack merely shrugs it off, face blank.

“Suit yourself, pumpkin.” The fingers steepled at his temple move slowly, tracing the border of his mask. Jack’s voice lowers, silky and ripe with dangerous promise. “One way or another, this’ll end with you telling me all you know.”

 

_________

 

The Hyperion camp is less a campsite than a full-blown settlement, complete with cafeteria outhouse, actual buildings, testing areas, and hangar bays. It’s also more heavily fortified than General Knoxx’s secret armoury, if Rhys had to put money on it. Manned turrets guard the electric-fenced perimeter at every thirty yards, with guards patrolling in constant rotations.

He’s unceremoniously led to one of the staff recreation areas, which sounds cool but is nothing more than a large tent with seating and some screens broadcasting news from Helios. Jack’d kicked him out of the Lancer with two guards and told him to wait, so here he was, two hours later, still waiting.

Handsome Jack, always so considerate.

It’s humid, stuffy, and Rhys is about to die from boredom. The guards aren’t talking to him at all after what he did to their buddies back at Scooter’s, so he’s pretty much just been left to his own devices. He’s tinkered with his arm, ECHO scanned the entire room, and rearranged all the chairs and tables in here. 

Still no sign of Jack.

He’s on the verge of falling asleep, head pillowed on his arms on a table, when he hears someone enter. It’s sad how eagerly Rhys sits up.

It’s only one of the Hyperion nerds, though - a tiny man with glasses in a sweater vest that definitely isn’t climate-appropriate.

Rhys hears the man squeak as he catches sight of his looming guards, who tower for a minute before returning to their idle guarding. The man wanders around the tent, pulling out chairs and checking under the tables.

“Hey,” Rhys calls out. “Need help?”

The man startles, hitting his head on the underside of a table as he straightens. “Oh, hey, didn’t see you there.” Rubbing the back of his neck, he nods. “Yeah, actually. I lost my glasses during my break earlier, one of the new ECHO models? Spent my bonus getting one. I could really use a hand looking for it.”

Rhys jumps out of his seat, glad to have something to do. A wary glance at the guards confirms that they don’t think this dude’s any threat, so Rhys is in the clear for this one.

“Cool, I’m Rhys,” he introduces, saluting and smiling. 

“Thanks, man, I’m Vaughn.”

Rounding the tables scattered around, Rhys comes to a stop. “Any idea where you left it?”

“Well, I was sitting over there - ” Vaughn points to an adjacent table, “ - during my break, and I took it off to get a breather.” He shrugs at Rhys’s questioning look. “ECHO glasses are a strain to wear all the time, let me tell you. They’re pretty heavy and the light display’s tiring on the eyes.”

Rhys narrows his eyes. “So ECHO glasses are like the S&S Focus?”

“Yeah, totally. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they’ve souped up the processor and display a hell lot since then, but the ECHO glasses are basically a slightly-less-shit version of the S&S Focus.” Vaughn looks at him curiously now, not-so-subtly trying to catch a glimpse of a staff ID to work out who Rhys is.

Rhys tries not to feel insulted at the criticism. “The S&S Focus was cutting-edge for its time, you know,” he defends, coughing to cover up his awkwardness.

“Oh, sure, it’s pretty cool they managed to get it to do all that it did with the tech that was available seven years ago.” Vaughn straightens from where he’s ducked down to peer under a table. “Hey, you used to work for S&S or something?”

“Or something,” Rhys mutters under his breath.Speaking louder, he says, “Nah, I just remember the Focus being the new _it_ thing for wearable tech way back then.” 

Vaughn nods. “Man, I know what you mean. It was _the_ thing to have, you know? I mean, I was in college back then, so I spent all my money on pizza and beer, but I could totally dream about it.” He looks Rhys up and down. “You new here? I don’t think I’ve seen you around the camp before.”

“Yeah, I arrived today, actually.” Out of the corner of his eye, Rhys catches the guards shifting uncomfortably. Ah. He’s probably not supposed to be too liberal with information concerning his presence here. Makes sense. Wouldn’t want the staff getting all worked up over a Pandoran _bandit_ wandering around camp. 

“You in IT?” Rhys asks, hoping from Vaughn’s sweater vest and ownership of an ECHO glass that his judgement isn’t too far off.

“Ha, close, but no,” Vaughn replies. “Accounting and Finance. No surprise there, huh?” He says, gesturing towards himself with both hands.

“It’s not so bad,” Rhys jokes. “You could be crazy buff underneath those layers.”

“I wish,” Vaughn remarks. “There’s not much room to exercise here. Space is a premium in camp, most of it’s for the labs.”

Labs? From Rhys’s best guess, they’re way out in the Dahl Headlands. There’s nothing here but barren desert and wasteland for miles.

“You could get one of those exercise bikes and leave it in your office,” Rhys offers. “They moonshot supplies in, right? You could put an order for it to arrive with the next moonshot, those things are well-boxed up. Assemble it when it arrives and hey, you’ve got yourself a gym indoors.” He frowns, imagining it. “Kind of.”

“That’s…” Vaughn trails off, looking unsure. “A pretty good idea, actually,” he ends up deciding. “Yeah,” he says, nodding. “I think I’m going to do that. Thanks, bro! You’re welcome to come by and use the bike when you want to.”

Pleased at having made himself a tentative new friend, Rhys smiles. “That’d be sweet, thanks. If you need a hand putting it together -”

“There you are.” Jack throws the door to the tent open, striding in. “What the hell are you doing still hanging about here?”

Next to him, Vaughn’s gone silent and pale as Elpis on a clear night.

Huffing a frustrated sigh, Rhys says, “You told me to wait here, remember?”

“What?” Jack’s moved on now, prowling around the confines on the room. He’s clearly worked up over something. He wanders to the bar at the back, picking up a bottle of whisky. He grimaces as he takes a swig from it. “Ugh, vile.” He tosses the bottle over his shoulder, and it shatters against the wall. Vaughn whimpers. 

Stalking back to the entrance, he barely spares Vaughn a glance as he calls out to Rhys over his shoulder. “Let’s go, come on.”

“Sorry about that, I’ll see you around?” Rhys calls out to Vaughn. He isn’t sure if he’ll be in camp for long, but there’s no harm being friendly. He hurries to the door after Jack, sending Vaughn an apologetic look and frantic wave. 

Stepping outside, eyes unadjusted, Rhys is temporarily blinded by the glaring sunlight. Squinting, he can make out Jack waiting impatiently by a cluster of buildings, so he gingerly picks his way across to him, hand shielding his eyes. It takes a while, but by the time he’s standing in front of Jack, his eyes are used to the glare of the sun off the sand. 

“Took you long enough,” Jack grumbles. He heads towards the foremost of the outcropping of prefab buildings, stabbing at the buttons on a panel to the right of the doorway. The door slides open with a soft _hiss_ and curls of cool smoke roll out from the dim interior.Rhys raises his eyebrows. This isn’t one of the regular buildings, then, he’s guessing.

They step through the doorway, and Rhys can make out nothing but stairs leading down. Leaning against the rail, he peers down the stairwell. He leans back, face faintly green. That’s _faaaaaar_ down.

He trails after Jack down the stairs, passing numerous cryptically labelled doors leading off to who-knows-where on their descent. After what he guesses to be five or six levels, they arrive at a door marked _PT._

Rhys frowns, looking askance at Jack. “Really. Really? _PT?_ That’s the best you could do to hide one of your super-secret projects? By _putting the initials of the title on the door?_ ”

Jack looks more than a little affronted. “Don’t see you jumping to identify the other projects we’ve got housed here,” he snaps.

Well. Fair enough.

Rhys can sense something behind the door, something almost familiar. It’s jarring. 

Jack pokes at the panel by the doorway, calling up a retinal scanner which promptly scans his left eye. 

Standing off to the side behind him, out of sight, Rhys activates his ECHO eye, scanning the panel for information or security weaknesses. He nearly sighs out loud when he’s met with a firewall so tough he’d need at least fifteen minutes to break through it. To be honest, it’s not that surprising. Jack’s always been a genius with his code, and from the elegance of the script in front of him, it’s very much his own. 

He deactivates his eye just as the door slides open, and he follows Jack into the room.

Surveying his surroundings, it’s…pretty impressive, actually. The setup they’ve got going down here wouldn’t look out of place in a lab on Helios. It’s clear that millions of credits have been put into this. Computer and data banks are lined up against all sides of the room, screens mounted on nearly every available surface. In the middle -

 _“Wow,”_ Rhys breathes, eyes wide. “Is that -?” he asks, not daring to believe his eyes.

“Yeeeeep,” Jack responds, arms at his waist, grin smug. “That’s it, alright.”

Rhys edges towards the shaft of light. R&D personnel are buzzing all around him, typing away at the bank of terminals sitting around it in a circle. 

Suspended in the light, spinning slowly, is a Vault key. 

Drawing as close as he can to it, Rhys circles the key, studying it intently. It’s not like any Vault key he’s ever seen. The lines are geometric, angular. It’s separated into two parts now, but it’s clear that when combined it forms a hexagon. Squinting, he can make out the initials _GP_ on the underside of one piece.

Returning to stand by Jack, Rhys keeps his voice low. “This isn’t a Vault key, not really. You found the Gortys Project, didn’t you?”

Still grinning, Jack’s eyes remain focused on the ever-rotating pieces. “That I did, kitten. Beautiful, isn’t it?” He tears his eyes from the key. “It’s not even complete yet. These nerds,” he tilts his head towards the scientists scrambling around them, “tell me that there are two more parts to this.” 

He wanders over to several crates at the far end of the room, where three scientists are attempting to pry one open with a crowbar. Jack pats the crate fondly. “Fortunately for us, they’ve just arrived today, so you’re in for a real treat, Rhysie.”

It’s almost painful to watch the trio of pasty, weedy scientists struggle with the crate, so Rhys walks over and nudges them out of the way, taking the (sweaty, ugh) crowbar. Crowbar in mechanical hand, he jams the end under the lid and levers it open in one swift motion, the joints in his mechanical arm doing the work for him.

Jack gives his arm a vaguely impressed and considering look before delving into the crate. He emerges with two oddly-shaped parts, both made of the same metal as the suspended key. A group of scientists have gathered around them by now, and one of the braver ones pipes up, “Uh, sir, that’s delicate, maybe you should let us -”

There’s a shot, and a smoking barrel, and the lady’s dead before she hits the ground.

Indifferent, Jack holsters his pistol, giving the body an evil eye. “Strangulation would have taken too long,” he surmises, before turning to the group gathered. “Anyone else have any other idiotic suggestions?” No one answers. You could hear a pin drop, if you managed find one here and were inclined to drop it. Hey, Rhys isn’t judging you for your odd hobbies.

“No?” Jack says, one eyebrow raised. “ _Fan_ tastic, now can you asswipes stop gawking like a gaggle of grannies and get this thing set up?” He waves the two parts he’s holding for emphasis. “Hah,” he mutters darkly, walking back to the light shaft. “ _Grannies._ My grandmother could take all of you _combined_ and not break a sweat, and do it while cooking dinner _and_ gardening _at the same time.”_

There’s a pause, then a mad scramble as the R&D staff dive back to their positions as fast as they can. Jack throws a disdainful look at the body left slumped on the floor. “You,” he barks, pointing at a bespectacled, freckled man at the station closest to the corpse. “Get someone from maintenance to come clean that up.” The man nearly falls over himself to do as he’s told.

Satisfied, and job terrifying the peons done for the day, Jack snaps his fingers. As if summoned, the (what Rhys presumes to be, since he has the craziest hair) head scientist appears next to him, gulping audibly. Jack hands him the parts. 

“Go do your thing,” he orders. “Don’t keep me waiting, you know I hate waiting.” The man _actually_ bows and scrapes before scampering off. Rhys shakes his head in disbelief.

Coming to stand next to him, Jack asks, “So, what do you think?”

“It’s…impressive,” Rhys allows, glancing at him. “What I don’t get is how this is related to Project Titan.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Jack singsongs. “The R&D rats tell me that Gortys here,” he says, gesturing to the floating pieces, “Was made to summon and hold the Vault of the Traveller, _and_ defeat the Traveller.” He waves a dismissive hand. “But obviously that failed badly for Atlas, boohoo for them, and they fucked up the Vault. So _that’s_ not why we’re here.”

Jack leads him over to a screen along one of the walls. An entire map of Pandora is reflected on it, silently blinking red dots at various locations. “Why we’re here, kitten, is because they tell me that Gortys is an Eridium _detector_.”

It’s not hard to make the leap from here. “You’re going to use Gortys to find Titan,” Rhys murmurs. “But why couldn’t you cut out the middleman, use Gortys to find the other -” 

It dawns on him. “ _Opened_ Vaults produce high amounts of Eridium. You’re sure Titan has opened Vaults on Pandora and secreted them away for study.” Jack’s nodding, looking pleased. “You know where the Vaults of the Destroyer and Traveller are, so you can ignore the locations of that…and whatever remains must be the Vaults from Titan.” 

And when Jack finds Titan, Rhys doesn’t say, he’ll find the rest of the unopened _and_ opened Vaults in the galaxies. It’s a chilling thought.

It’s lucky timing that has the head scientist approach them then, clearing his throat in nervousness. “Uh, sirs, the Gortys Project is ready to be assembled. We thought you’d like to do the honours.” He’s looking at Jack, of course. Rhys can tell the scientists are still trying to figure out who he is and why he’s here, but they’re giving him a wide berth because of his proximity and apparent familiarity with Jack.

“Damn right I do,” Jack says, heading for where they’ve set up two large cannon-like machines to each side of the key. The light suspension shaft is deactivated, and as the parts float to the ground, the machines to the side are turned on, drawing each of the halves to them. 

When each half reaches each machine, they push the machines to face each other, about two metres apart. 

“C’mon, Rhysie, put that arm to use,” Jack orders, brushing aside the scientists to end up behind one of the machines. 

Following Jack’s example, Rhys goes to stand behind the other, bracing his arms against it. “Now, Rhys, come _on,_ ” Jack calls, and Rhys shoves at it with all his strength. It’s slow going, the machine inching forward at an excruciating pace. 

“Nearly there,” he grits out, shifting to put his shoulder to it. 

There’s a resounding hum that seems to whir through and settle in his bones when the machines connect, blinding light shooting out from the middle. Rhys throws a hand up to shield his eyes.

When the light fades, all that’s left is…

_Huh._

“It’s smaller than I expected,” Rhys offers.

There’s a tiny sphere - robot - _thing_ where the halves of the key were, about a foot high. 

The room is silent for a second, and it looks around curiously.

“HI!” It pipes up, and - okay, it’s a girl voice, so Rhys is going to call it a ‘she’, because it feels weird calling something so clearly animate an ‘it’.

Jack’s crouching down before Gortys, brow furrowed. The head scientist scurries up to stand next to him, handing him the remaining two parts. 

“Hey! You’ve got my upgrades! Sweet!” Rhys tries to hide a smile as the furrow between Jack’s brow deepens further. It also seems as if Gortys is incapable of speaking in sentences that don’t end in exclamation points. 

Jack extends his hand, holding out one of the parts and making to install it onto Gortys. As if magnetised, the first one floats towards her, and another blinding flash of light later, Gortys is now…

Five feet tall.

Okay. 

Sure.

That’s…probably the weirdest thing Rhys has ever seen, to be honest.

Jack attempts to do the same with the final piece, but Gortys backs away slowly. “Uh, I don’t think you want to do that, not in here?” She twists her chassis to look around the room. “I don’t know what it does, but I just know it’s not a good idea to give me that upgrade in such a small room, I think? At least, that’s what my system tells me.”

Jack’s been silent throughout all of this, which is actually more terrifying than if he’d immediately murdered all the R&D scientists in the room. Standing from his crouch, he taps the remaining piece he’s holding against his chin.

“Soooooo, Gortys, right?” he asks, gaze shuttered. Rhys sees some of the scientists break out in sweat.

Gortys beams, which is weird, because she doesn’t have a mouth, but it’s clear she’s beaming all the same. “Yuuuup, that’s me!”

“You know why you’re here, Gortys?” Jack questions.

Gortys looks slightly more uncertain. “To, umm, summon the Vault?” She glances at Rhys for validation. “I can do that, if you like? I don’t like it, but I could.” Looking around the room again, she adds, “I’d probably recommend going outside, though!”

Feeling bad, Rhys crouches down to her eye level. “No, none of that, no summoning Vaults,” he reassures. Jack takes a few steps, ending up standing close enough to Rhys that he can feel his body heat through the fabric of his pants.

“Exactly what Rhys here said,” he states. “What we need you to do for us, GP, is find Eridium. _Sources_ of Eridium. Think you can do that?”

Gortys’s eyes light up. “Oh, that’s easy!”

She points straight at Rhys.

“There’s one right here!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cackles wildly*


	3. these shackles i've made

Rhys can do three things:

  1. Play the room. He’s not as slick a con as Fiona, but he’s reasonably sure he can convince Jack that Gortys is malfunctioning.
  2. Run like hell. This won’t work, what with them being six floors underground in a fortified bunker in a heavily armed Hyperion camp. Rhys hasn’t survived this long by being suicidal, thank you.
  3. Shoot everything. It’s a better plan than running, at least. Rhys figures he can take out all the scientists who don’t look like they’ve seen sunlight in their lives before they can fling their coffee mugs at him. Jack’s less than a foot away, though, and where he outclasses Jack in firearms he knows Jack’s better at hand-to-hand.



It’s a long moment before anyone speaks, and all it takes is a raised eyebrow from Rhys to have Jack do the work for him.

Jack shoots the head scientist a death glare. “Fix. It,” he bites out, jerking his chin violently towards Gortys.

She shrinks away when the head scientist (man, Rhys should really find out what his name is, shouldn’t he) approaches her, and Rhys almost feels bad. Not enough to intervene, though. He rises to his feet, stepping back from Gortys. 

Jack stalks to the exit, turning when he reaches the door. “Tomorrow, Owen. If this isn’t fixed by then…” he trails off, laughing softly. Dangerously. “ _Well_.”

There you go. Head scientist is apparently called Owen. Not the name Rhys would have guessed, but he can sort of see it now.

Rhys nods to the scientists huddled around, making his way out after Jack. He’s feeling pretty good for dodging that bullet so smoothly. He trails out the doorway, which swooshes shut behind him.

Jack’s waiting outside the door, before the stairway landing. He’s leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest, one foot bent and propped up on the wall behind him.

He’s giving Rhys a calculating look.

“What?” Rhys asks, wary.

Jack pushes off the wall, prowling towards him. 

Rhys finds himself stepping back in reflex, Jack crowding him in. His arms come up on either side of Rhys’s face, bodily caging him against the wall.

This close, Rhys can see the green and blue flecks in his irises, smell traces of lingering gunpowder. He swallows hard, forcing himself to continue meeting Jack’s eyes.

“Eridium, huh?” Jack asks softly, and Rhys can feel the puffs of his breath on his skin. Alarm bells are going off in his head.

“It’s Atlas tech,” Rhys scoffs, playing it off. “It’s kinda surprising Gortys didn’t explode during assembly.”

Jack hums, uncommitted. His right hand comes up to brush a stray strand of hair off Rhys’s face, trailing to trace the shell of his ear.

It’s hard to breathe, much less think. It’s…disquieting to admit that he hasn’t had sex in a _while,_ and Jack’s always, _always_ known how to push all of his buttons. 

Jack huffs a a quiet laugh. “ _Oh,_ look at you,” he murmurs. His hand slips lower to cup his jaw, and Rhys can feel the rough pads of his fingers on sensitive skin. “Se- _ven_ years, Rhysie. Seven goddamned years.”

Rhys chews on his lip, worrying at it with his tongue. Jack’s gaze is drawn to his mouth, pupils dilated. Lucky for him, the familiarity is a double-edged sword. He knows _exactly_ how to get back under Jack’s skin. 

The renewed knowledge that Jack isn’t immune to him any more than he is to Jack infuriates him. _Seven goddamned years._

“No thanks to you,” he hisses, eyes flashing.

Jack’s hand tightens uncomfortably around his neck, then goes slack, the ring of his fingers ghosting his skin. “I wouldn’t throw stones here, kitten. Didn’t your mother ever tell you?” his voice is hard, sharp as spun glass. “All’s fair in love and war. Don’t be bitter just because I won.”

He steps back, hand falling to his side. Taking the stairs, he calls over his shoulder. “We don’t have all day.”

Heart pounding, anger a snake slithering through his veins, Rhys follows.

With Jack, it seems he always does.

 

__________

 

 

Did Rhys tell you Jack’d been his first?

He’d met Jack when he was twenty-one. Jack had been twenty-nine.

God, they’d been so fucking _young._

 

 

__________

 

 

Jack leaves him under the watch of two guards again, heading off without a word. 

Rhys eyes his guards. He can’t even tell if they’re the same ones from before, with their shiny helmeted heads and identical outfits. He think he’s free to wander around camp, though, so he chances it, standing from his chair in a different rec room and heading for the door. The guards don’t say a word, merely following after him, so Rhys counts that as a win.

It’s getting dark out. A quick glance at his palm computer tells him it’s pushing seven in the evening. He’s been gone from Hollow Point for going on fourteen hours now. He wonders if Fiona and Sasha are back yet, and if they’ve noticed. He thinks Scooter would’ve told them, but he wants to get a message out just in case.

Now that he thinks about it, Jack hadn’t explicitly said he couldn’t contact them. It was more an implied thing, with the kidnapping and threats and all. It’s probably fine… _probably._

He tells the guards that he’s headed for the john, but they give no indication that they hear him. “Oooookay,” Rhys mutters, heading for a building that’s helpfully labelled ’TOLETS’, the ‘I’ having disappeared off to parts unknown. Thankfully, the guards don’t follow him in.

Just to be safe, in case he’s not supposed to do this, he figures he’s got about five minutes. Shutting himself in a cubicle, he boots up his palm computer, sending a command to patch a call through to Fiona via his ECHO eye. While it attempts to connect, he pulls up his privacy software in his palm. A quick tweak to the code makes his call untraceable and undetectable, and his piggyback on Hyperion network secure. He executes the programme, then turns to flip the toilet lid down, settling himself atop. 

The call’s still ringing, and Rhys is beginning to get worried. It’s not like Fiona or Sasha to take this long to answer.

He’s just about to give up and sent them a message via ECHOmail when there’s a _click_ indicating that the call’s been accepted. He doesn’t have a camera on his end - it’s not something his palm computer comes with - which, at the moment, he’s pretty relieved by. It’s not that he’s been roughed up since getting here or that he thinks himself hideously deformed (excuse you, no one who isn’t as good-looking and aware of it as he is uses that much gel in his hair), it’s just that it’s…been a long day. He’s drained, heartsore, and shaken, and if Fiona and Sasha could see him now, they’d stop at nothing to come get him, which is a risk to them he’s not willing to take.

The call finally connects, and the blurry image Sasha’s face and Fiona’s - uh, torso? - fills the projected screen. He can see the interior of their caravan in the background, and he sighs a little in relief.

“Rhys? Are you there?” Sasha calls out, her voice tinny over the speakers. 

“Yeah,” he replies. “I’m here.”

There’s a screech on the other end, and Fiona’s face comes into view. “Where the _hell_ are you? We got the call from Scooter this morning saying you’d left early without your things, and Janey said she hadn’t seen you at all -”

“I’m fine,” he assures. “I just got caught up in something.” He clears his throat. “Someone.”

Sasha’s eyes flash dangerously. 

Rhys runs his hand nervously through his hair, and Fiona narrows her gaze at him at the action.

“It’s, uh, _Handsome Jack_ ,” he whispers, afraid of being overheard.

There’s more screeching at the other end. It’s been nearly three minutes now, so Rhys knows he has to wrap this up quickly.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have time to explain,” he says, voice hushed. “Jack came by Scooter’s, said he needed me for something. Didn’t really give me an option, but I’m unhurt. We’re at a Hyperion Camp now - I don’t know how long this’ll take, but I’m trying to shake him off as fast as I can.”

The look Fiona gives him is equal parts worried and considering. She’s a con artist, after all. A potentially lucrative job is still a potentially lucrative job, no matter who the mark is, most dangerous man in the galaxies or no. “This is about S&S?” she asks.

Rhys nods.

Tapping her fingers against her chin, she says, “Look, I know you guys have _history.”_ Rhys snorts. That’s a mild way of putting it. “But sticking by Jack? There’s a lot of things you could find out. A lot of _profitable_ things. And I can’t imagine what you must be feeling and going through right now, but what I’m trying to say is that you don’t have to be the victim again. You can walk away from this having gained something - _knowing_ you gained something at Jack’s expense. The situation you’re in isn’t great…” She trails off. “But you could make the best of it.”

It’s a pretty good idea. The three of them aren’t exactly flush - no one on Pandora really is, hence why they’re still on Pandora. But a few stolen points of information, maybe some tech blueprints…they might be able to get a shuttle off here, set themselves up somewhere better.

Nodding slowly, Rhys agrees. “Yeah, that’s good, I could do that.” Fiona smiles encouragingly at him.

“But,” Sasha pipes in. “Why stop there? This asshole screwed you over once, right? You don’t know how long you’re going to be there,” she points out. “After what he did to you…why don’t you make him bleed for it? You’ve got us behind your back, you can do it.”

There’s a half-formed plan floating around the back of Rhys’s mind, called into nascent form after Fiona’s suggestion. After what Sasha’s said, though? He thinks he can do this. 

Yeah. Yeah, he can.

Nodding faster now, Rhys grins at them, edges flinty. “Yeah, fuck yes, you guys are awesome.”

Looking at her fingernails, Sasha rolls her eyes. “Of course we are, dumbass. Just don’t, you know, get yourself killed.”

Fiona takes over then, nudging Sasha out of the way. “What emotionally-stunted over here,” she says, jerking a thumb at Sasha’s direction, ignoring the _hey!_ from her, “Is trying to say is that we love you, and as much as we want to get back at Jackass as much as you do, you have to be _careful._ Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.”

Rhys raises his eyebrows, and Fiona corrects her statement. “Fine, yeah, okay, don’t do most things we’d do either. Stay safe, come back to us, we expect frequent updates or we’re coming after you.”

He smiles, feeling much better. “Yeah, sure. I’ll ECHOmail if I can’t get a call through. Be safe.”

Fiona and Sasha wave, and he waves back before ending the call. 

Standing and stretching, he exhales deeply, thinking about what Sasha said. Why stop at just grifting off Jack? He’s here, at a Hyperion base camp, surrounded by Hyperion tech. With skill, he can get into their network. He doesn’t even need luck to get at Jack.

He’s goddamned Rhys Carver, son of Sarah and Saul, heir to the defunct throne of S&S Munitions, and he’ll have his cake and eat it, Handsome fucking Jack be damned. He’s spent seven years of his life trying to forget the twenty-one years that came before it, and he’s _sick_ of running away.

 

__________

 

 

Jack summons him about an hour later, after Rhys has wandered around most of the camp, checking out the lay of the land as innocuously as possible, guards shadowing him.

He’s led to one of the buildings in what he thinks he’s identified as the housing section, this one bigger, flashier, and set apart from the rest. It’s blatant arrogance and probably not the best thing for security that an ornate metal ‘H’ and ‘J’ adorns each panel of the double-doored entrance. The guards hustle him into the entry foyer before shutting the doors behind him, leaving him standing alone in the dark.

“Right,” Rhys huffs, looking around as best he can. He wanders into a large lounge area, living room, dining, and kitchen all rolled into one in the open-plan space. The lights come on without him doing anything, startling him. A quick glance around tells him he’s still alone, so he guesses it’s keyed to living signatures.

It’s a lot less flashy in here, the furniture all tastefully black and white, streamlined and minimalist. Jack never did like pointless distractions in his personal space. A quick scan with his eye tells him what he’s already guessed - that everything is data-blocked, and the server room off to the corner is impenetrable.

He can make out light coming from a room upstairs, so he makes his way up, wary. Approaching the doorway, he finds Jack in a study, surrounded by actual - _paper_ \- books, thick rugs spanning the floor, and an honest-to-god fireplace, fire crackling away behind the grate.

There’s wine and plates of cheese and charcuterie laid out on low tables to the side of two low armchairs by the fire, Jack reclining like a king in his throne in one. Wine in hand, he gestures at the other armchair, and Rhys finds himself drawn to it, sinking down into the plushness. He’s not had luxuries like this in a long, _long_ time.

Jack reaches for a bottle of wine, pouring some into a glass. He hands it to Rhys, broad fingers delicate on the fine stem.

“There’s no need for us to be enemies,” Jack purrs, gaze heavy with promise. “You and I - we worked well together, we can do that again, can’t we? We all big boys here.” He sips at his wine, lips staining a dark, devastating red. “You can’t love living on a crapcan like Pandora. I know you, Rhysie.” Jack gestures around them, at the richness of the study, the casual opulence and money of the room. “And I know you like the finer things in life.”

Jack brings his wineglass to Rhys’s lips, nudges them open. He tips it forward so the wine, heady and smooth, slips down his throat, warming his blood. “You like wine,” he murmurs, gaze intent on Rhys’s faintly flushed face. He picks up a cube of delicate Eden cheese, hand coming up to cup the side of his face. Jack strokes his thumb against his mouth, and Rhys’s lips part involuntarily. He sets the cheese on his tongue, and the flavours melt. “You like cheese,” he continues, hand brushing Rhys’s throat as he swallows.

The hand around his throat tugs Rhys forward, and Jack slants his mouth over his, hot and searing. The kiss is deep, long and complex with emotions, curling like woodsmoke and bitter ashes. Jack tastes the same. Isn’t it funny that of all of things that could devastate him, it’s the way Jack tastes _exactly the same?_

They part slowly, breaths ghosting across lips. 

“And,” Jack whispers, pupils blown, “You like _me_.”

_Make him bleed for it,_ Sasha echoes in his head. The plan, half-formed in his mind, coalesces into a single, bright, painful idea.

Rhys exhales shakily, reaching for his glass of wine left abandoned. He brings it to his lips, fully aware that Jack is following his every movement. Taking the moment to collect himself as he sips, he considers him over the rim of his glass.

Setting the glass back on the table, he traces his lips with his tongue, wine and Jack combining in an intoxicating mix.

He grazes the tips of his fingers over Jack’s arm, slung across the arm of his chair. Rhys smiles slyly when he hears a sharp intake of breath.

“ _Oh,”_ Jack sighs, “You _minx.”_  

In a single motion, he hauls Rhys over the arms of their chairs separating them and onto his lap, his hands settling on either side of Rhys’s hips. Straddling Jack, he can feel how hard he is, and eyes hooded, smile wicked, he rolls his hips forward.

A hand cards through Rhys’s hair, gripping it tight and using it as leverage to yank his lips down to meet Jack’s. This kiss isn’t slow and unhurried like before. It’s bruising, hard, and cruel, teeth and tongues clashing and parrying for dominance.

Standing suddenly, Rhys is thrown off-balance and has to hook his legs around Jack to keep from falling.

“Yeah, no, we’re not doing this here,” Jack growls, crushing their lips back together as they fumble their way out of the study. Rhys is backed towards the door at the end of the hallway, their mouths locked and teeth nipping, hands stroking and touching. His shirt and vest are yanked off, and he loses his belt and shoes along the way. He’s hard as a rock.

Not content to lose this round, Rhys sets to work undressing Jack, shoving at his jacket and undoing the buckles on his vest, tugging off his ridiculous yellow sweater. Jack shoves him backwards through the doorway until the back of his knees hit the bed, and Rhys falls over, back on the bed. 

Rhys’s pants are shucked off, and his boxers with it. Shirtless, braced over him, Jack stares down at him. In the dim light of the room, he can make out the edges of his mask. Unconscious of his actions, his hand drifts up to touch it, wondering at the skin-like texture. 

It comes as a shock when he’s violently pinned to the bed by his wrists, Jack furious. “Like what you see?” he spits, hand coming up to fist at Rhys’s cock. His strokes are harsh, and the friction is painful without lube. 

“Get over yourself,” Rhys gasps, eyes watering. “You aren’t the only one who’s changed.” Jack’s gaze goes to his arm, then to his eye. Through the tears, he can’t make out Jack’s expression, but the harsh strokes stop, and Jack lifts off him, heading for the bedside table.

Breathing hard, Rhys is left on the bed, panting at the ceiling. Turning his head, he can see Jack coating his fingers and hands with lube, stepping out of his pants and boxers. 

“Come here, kitten,” Jack says, and Rhys isn’t sure his muscles will hold him. “I _said, come here.”_

Rhys stumbles to his feet, and goes over to stand in front of Jack. Wrapping a hand around Rhys’s cock, he begins to pump in long, slow strokes, and the friction is so, so good. He needs to touch something, anything that will ground him, and he grabs for Jack, who tuts at him and stops stroking. Whining and returning his hands to his sides, Jack begins pumping him again.

“Look at you,” Jack breathes, voice quiet, almost wondering. Jack knows exactly what he likes, squeezing the tip of his cock, tightening around the base and twisting as he pulls with every stroke. He’s so close to coming when Jack stops, pushing at his shoulders.

Rhys doesn’t want to dissect what it means that he gets to his knees so quickly, and all dark thoughts are chased away when Jack’s hands card through his hair, gripping and pulling him towards his cock.

“Open,” Jack orders, and with a long look up at him through his lashes, Rhys does. Jack is uncut, and Rhys wraps his hand around Jack’s cock, pulling the foreskin down, leaning in to lick at the tip, lapping at the precome that beads out. Swirling his tongue around the head, he faintly registers hearing Jack moan, and his eyes drift shut.

“Hey,” Jack says, voice rough, hand tugging in his hair. “None of that. Eyes on me, Rhysie.” 

Nodding, Rhys bends to take more of his cock into his mouth, flattening his tongue to go as deep as he can before pulling back, coughing. He’s out of practice - he did say it’s been a while. He works at it, taking a little more each time, until he’s flush with the mat of curls at the base of Jack’s cock, cock hitting the back of his throat. 

“Yeeeees,” Jack groans, hands hard in Rhys’s hair, tilting his head back. His eyes are watering now, but Rhys forces himself to keep his gag reflex down. Jack thrusts slowly into his mouth, eyes fixed on him. When his thrusts get faster and less controlled, Jack pulls out and tugs him to his feet.

Jack guides Rhys over to the bed, bending him over. There’s a click of a bottle cap, and then lube drizzled across his hole. The first touch of Jack’s fingers on his rim sends shivers arcing up his spine.

It’s good, better than he remembers.

“God, look at that hole. So tight,” Jack growls. “I’m going to fuck that open.” 

Rhys moans as Jack impatiently works him open with one finger, barely giving him time to adjust before adding two, scissoring them. His other hand comes up to pull at Rhys’s cock, strokes solid and firm. Jack crooks his fingers inside Rhys, and then -

_God._ God. How has Rhys lived without this?

“There is it,” Jack says, grinning wickedly, fingers angling to hit his prostate again.

Satisfied that Rhys is prepped enough, Jack pulls his fingers out, and Rhys is left bereft while Jack lubes up his cock with fast strokes, eyes hooded and blown with pleasure. 

Jack comes up behind him, one hand steady on his hip, the other guiding his cock. He presses the tip in, and pushes slowly. Rhys gasps when the head pops in, whining a little at the stretch.

“Shh, shh.” Jack keeps pushing, and the burn is nearly painful, but still unbelievably good. He grunts when he bottoms out, fully seated inside him, hard and thick. 

He doesn’t give time for Rhys to collect himself, fucking into him fast and rough. The stretch from the first few thrusts is uncomfortable, but then Jack angles his hips, and he’s nailing his prostate with every snap of his hips, and Rhys is seeing stars.

Rhys is clawing at the bedsheets, teeth gnashing and body taut at the onslaught of pleasure. He’s close, _so close,_ he can feel it. The tension is building at the base of his spine, winding up around his body, tightening every muscle.

“I’m close,” he whines, and Jack responds with even more brutal thrusts, forcing Rhys up the bed. Their fucking is wild now, base and raw. 

Rhys whites out when the orgasm crashes over his body, and he’s vaguely aware of Jack pistoning his hips, thrusts jerky, and his shout as he comes.

Jack falls into the bed next to where he’s sprawled, sweaty, naked, and sated.

Rolling out of the wet patch and onto his back, Rhys forces himself to stand, frowning when he feels a wet trickle running down the back of his thighs. 

“You didn’t wear a condom,” he states.

“I’m clean,” Jack nonchalantly replies, smug and sex-satisfied on the bed. “And what, you planning on being fucked by someone else while you’re here?”

There’s danger in that tone, violence and blood curled up in the vowels of his words.

Shaking his head, Rhys pads over to the ensuite to rinse off the come and smell of sex. He doesn’t bother shutting the door behind him. 

He’s stopped by the look of his reflection in the mirror. There are hickeys blooming red and lush on his neck, bruises forming on his arms and hips.

The last time he’d looked like this had been seven years ago, to the date.

He hears Jack wander over, and sees him come up to lean against the bathroom doorway, uncaring of his nakedness. 

Jack’s eyes meet his in the mirror, and he _knows_ they’re thinking of the same thing. He comes to stand by Rhys, hand coming up to brush the side of his neck, lingering over his tattoo, turning his head to face him. He draws in close, presses their lips together, coaxing a kiss.

It’s seven years later, exactly to the day, and Rhys is standing in a bathroom, covered by their cooling come, being kissed by Jack Lawrence. 

The only difference is that seven years ago, Jack had broken the kiss off, gotten dressed, asked to see him the next day, and had gone off to murder Rhys’s entire family.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can we just agree that this chapter is less about plot and more to do with an excuse for me to write smut
> 
> k bye


	4. you can't get enough

“Leaving so soon?” Jack’s reclining on the bed, back resting against the headboard, unabashedly naked. 

Rhys emerges from the shower, towelling his hair while picking his way around the room, grabbing pieces of his clothing as he goes along.

“You kick in your sleep,” he retorts, fishing his boxers from a pile of hastily discarded clothing. He sniffs them. Eh, they’ll do. Tugging them on, he sets to work pulling on his pants, then shirt, but his vest has vanished entirely, so he gives that up as a lost cause. 

Mostly dressed except for shoes, he turns to look at Jack, who’s picked up an ECHOpad from somewhere and is poking away at it, presumably working. “I take it you have spare staff housing somewhere?” he asks.

Jack grunts, waving a hand dismissively. Assuming he’ll get no help from that quarter, Rhys picks up his shoes and leaves the room, heading for the exit. 

“Sector C, Unit 4,” Jack calls out from behind him, and Rhys raises a thumbs-up as he walks down the stairs.

He lets himself out into the cool Pandoran night. It’s not as dark as Hollow Point, but it’s dark enough that the light from Elpis casts a pale glow over everything. He must look a mess - hair mussed, clothes rumpled, hickeys high up on his neck. 

It’s the price he has to pay.

Jaw set and reasonably sure of his bearings, Rhys turns away from a sign clearly pointing to Sector C.

Jack dealt with, it’s time to talk to Gortys.

 

 

__________

 

 

Getting into the R&D bunker isn’t the hard part. The security panel to the building itself is easily hacked, so it’s only once Rhys scales the six flights of stairs to the _PT_ lab that he has to really get to work.

The security code’s easy enough to hack, but the retinal scanner’s trickier. Lucky for Rhys, he’d planned for this, and he pulls up a retinal scan of Jack’s eye that he’d taken via his ECHO eye on his palm computer.

Nothing like sex to distract someone from you scanning their eyeball. He shrugs internally. You win some, lose some, and good sex is pretty great all round. He ignores the emotional turmoil churning at the back of his mind, the one that sounds just like his mother screaming that he’s a filthy whore and a traitor to their family.

The next part’s tricky. Rhys isn’t sure how sensitive these scanners are, and the data-blocked panel tells him nothing about whether it’s alarmed. He has one shot at this, and if it doesn’t work and his luck is shit, this could bring the entire security force of the camp down on his head. Literally, since he’s underground.

Taking a deep breath, he activates the retinal scanner, and holds up the scan of Jack’s eye to it. Five seconds pass, then ten, and Rhys is about to get the hell out of there when the scanner beeps and the light flashes green, and the door to the lab slides open.

Exhaling, Rhys can feel his heart pounding, and his flesh hand is clammy with sweat. Stepping into the lab, he makes sure to shut the door behind him.

It’s dark in here, the only light coming from the computer terminals he guesses are running processes too important to power down for the night. He can’t see Gortys from where he is by the entrance, so he walks further in, turning on his palm light.

He’s by the light suspension shaft - powered down post-Gortys activation - when he hears a noise behind him. Spinning around, gun out, he pauses when he sees it’s Gortys, who’s squeaked and tucked herself away in her little sphere.

“Oh, thank _god,”_ he says, relieved, and too manly to admit that his pulse is racing from the scare. 

Gortys peeks out, unfolding herself from the sphere, and it’s reassuring to see that she’s still in one piece as far as he can tell, even if she's no longer five feet tall. He doesn’t think the scientists pulled her apart to _‘fix’_ her, at least.

“It’s you!” she exclaims, and Rhys rushes to shush her, finger over his lips to indicate that they need to keep their volume down.

“Heeeeey there,” he says. “It’s me, I’m Rhys, I don’t think you got my name earlier,” he introduces. She shakes her head. “How are you doing? You okay?” he asks, feeling slightly awful now that he remembers the way he’d basically scapegoated her.

“Yeah,” she sighs, one tiny robot hand poking at her chassis dejectedly. “They couldn’t figure out what’s wrong with me.” She looks at him, eyes wide. “I identified every other Eridium source correctly, though! Just not you.”

“About that,” Rhys mutters, wondering how he’s going to bring this up in a way that Gortys will understand. He knows _in theory_ that she’s a robot AI that doesn’t have an age, but she just seems so…young. “You’re not,” he grimaces, about to rethink his plan before he decides to screw it and throw caution to the wind, “You’re not wrong about that.” He pauses, then corrects himself. “Well. Not entirely.”

“I’m not?” she sounds so hopeful. God, Rhys is a terrible human being for being mean to her earlier.

“Uh, no,” he confirms, looking around for just the right thing to help him prove his point. Spotting a drafting table off to the side of the room, he walks towards it, Gortys rolling after him. Rooting around the pen pot that houses several pencils with broken nibs, a few pens, a couple of rulers and some highlighters, he emerges with an X-Acto knife. It’s blunt at the tip and definitely not sterile, but it’s not like he can get an infection, so it’ll do.

“See, the thing is,” he flounders. It’s kind of hard to find words for this. He hasn’t had to explain this to anyone in his life, and the only people who know are dead. 

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he turns to Gortys, X-Acto knife in hand. “It’s probably easier if I show you.” He sets the knife to the wrist of his flesh hand and draws a small incision, about an inch long.

Gortys gasps as he winces, and he clenches his fist so blood wells up. Just because he can’t get infections doesn’t mean he’s immune to pain, and the cut stings. Through clenched teeth, he asks her to perform a scan on the blood.

“Uh, sure,” she says, and he isn’t certain how it’s possible for a robot to look so judgemental, but she does, and she probably thinks he’s crazy. (Jury’s still out on that one.) A beam of light shoots out from the top of her head-antenna-thing, and passes over the cut on his wrist.

“ _Wooooow,”_ she says after a minute, voiced awed. “Is all blood like that?”

Rhys looks around for something to blot the blood, and returns after grabbing a tissue from someone’s desk. “Not that I know of,” he tells her, eyes sharp for her reaction.

“Cool! That’s an Eridium composite!” She scoots closer to peer at the cut on his wrist - not that you’d be able to tell anything just by looking at it. It trickles sluggishly red. “So I was right? Sort of?”

Crouching down, tissue pressed to his wrist, he nods. “Yup. You know how I said this isn’t something everyone has?”

Gortys bobs her head in affirmation.

“Well, I need you to help me keep this a secret just between the two of us.”

She looks unsure at that. “I don’t know…” she frowns, looking worried. “They were kinda mean to me earlier, they said they’d take me apart tomorrow.”

Yeah, Rhys is a horrible person. “I promise I won’t let that happen,” he assures quickly. “All you need to do is tell them your sensors weren’t calibrated correctly, and were hyper-sensitive. And if anyone asks, I’ll show them this.” Pressing several specific points on his mechanical arm, a small compartment opens, revealing a tiny chip of Eridium ore. Fishing it out, he presents it to Gortys with a flourish. It glows eerily in the dim lab, glimmering purple.

“Oh!” she exclaims, nodding. “Okay, I can do that. We’re friends now, _secret_ friends?” she asks hopefully, eyes wide, robot hands clasped together. 

Tucking the Eridium chip back in its compartment and shutting it, he stands, grinning down at her. “Hell yeah, secret friends.” He extends an arm out, palm raised.

She meets his high-five halfway, and he grins even wider. He turns to make his way to the exit.

“Thanks, Gortys, you’re a life saver.” 

“No problem!” 

Rhys is about to hit the panel to open the door when she calls out from behind him.

“Rhys?” she asks. “What happened to you?” her voice is curious, plaintive.

He glances down at his wrist, and at the inch-long incision. “Nothing,” he responds at length. “I was born like this.”

 

 

__________

 

 

It’s nearly three in the morning when he collapses onto his single bed in Unit 4 of Sector C. He’s exhausted, physically and mentally, and his brain won’t stop running at a mile a minute.

He’s terrified that he’s fucked everything up by going to Gortys. He’s sick to his stomach by the lingering trace of stickiness that coats his boxers. 

Rhys hasn’t felt this alive in _years._

He flops over to lie on his back, holding his flesh arm out above him. He fingers the cut, tracing it lightly where the blood has coagulated and scabbed.

When his parents had found out what he could do, it’d been an answer to their prayers. It’s catapulted S&S Munitions from a fledgling, struggling arms manufacturer on Eden-6 to the galaxies’ fifth largest. He’d been so proud of his abilities then, and so confused as to why they wouldn’t let him tell anyone about it.

It’d taken his babysitter’s loose lips and one kidnapping attempt to make him realise how dangerous his situation was.

God, what he wouldn’t give to be rid of it now. Powers aside, there’s nothing inherently special about his blood, other than the fact that Eridium binds to it the way haemoglobin binds to oxygen. He’s not even lucky enough that it grants him powers the way it does Sirens. The most he can do is eat some Eridium to heal in emergencies, and even that takes a huge toll. It somehow also keeps his wounds from getting infected, which is nice.

What had Lilith said?

Oh, yeah. 

_Kid, the only thing your powers are gonna do is get you killed, you take my word on that._

Rhys swallows, his hand closing into a fist. He’s made it to 28, he’s reasonably sure by now of his ability to keep himself alive.

What Jack wants…he can’t help him with that. He’s seen the lengths Jack’s willing to go to gain even the smallest bit of power. 

With Project Titan, Jack’ll salt the earth.

Fiercely, agonisingly, he wishes his parents were still alive. His mother would know exactly what to say to make him feel better, and his dad would’ve cracked a joke to take his mind of this whole crapbag of a situation. 

Squeezing his eyes shut, he breathes in and out slowly to regulate his breathing, trying to calm his racing pulse. The most frustrating thing about all this is that he doesn’t even have an explanation for the way he is. His parents had made discreet enquiries that’d tapered off to nothing, too afraid for his safety to risk approaching experts properly. As far as Rhys knows, he’s just been this way all his life. It’s just something he was born with.

He channels his frustration and anger and hurt towards thoughts of Jack. It hadn’t even been about Rhys’s abilities. Jack’d fucked him over for nothing more than a chance to consolidate Hyperion’s power, to add another feather in the cap of felled companies he’s crushed.

Annoyed with himself for his ability to shut his brain off, he flips around on the bed, trying to find a more comfortable position. The clock on the bedside table unhelpfully blinks 03:42, taunting him with every second that passes.

Restless, he spits in his flesh hand, letting it under the covers, tracing the flat expanse of his middle on its journey down to his cock. He’s already half-hard in anticipation. Wrapping his hand around his length, he jerks himself off quickly, perfunctorily. He just wants the rush of endorphins to ease him into sleep. 

He fucks his cock through the ring of his fingers, tightening when towards the head on each stroke, twisting on the way down, just how he likes it. Rhys thinks back to earlier that evening, the way Jack held him down and made him suck him off. 

His cock is leaking precome and is harder than a rock, and he can feel the familiar pressure building at the base of his spine. His mind flashes to the way Jack’d fucked him roughly - the way he’d spilled in load deep inside him. Stroking faster and harder, he bites down hard on his lip, eyes fluttering shut, and Rhys comes with the memory of blue and green eyes seared on the backs of his eyelids.

Fumbling around the bedside table for a tissue, he sloppily wipes his come off his stomach, feeling vaguely uneasy that the thought of Jack brought him so rapidly to orgasm.

Head hitting the pillow, Rhys goes out like a light.

 

_________

 

 

There’s pounding on his door. It’s loud, it’s insistent, and it’s annoying as _fuck._

“What?” Rhys groans, stumbling out of bed. His eyes are still mostly shut, and it takes him a long minute to correctly work the panel by the side of the door for him to get it open.

Of course, it’s Jack who greets him, arms akimbo on hips, salacious grin on his face as he eyes Rhys’s state of undress.

Rhys is going to murder whoever it was that came up with the term _good_ morning.

“What do you want?” he grunts again, turning to head back into his tiny room, flopping, face first, back into bed.

“Hey, hey, none of that now, rise and shine!” Jack says, voice entirely too loud for a room this small. He pats Rhys on the butt and gets a kick in the shin for it.

“You’re lucky I like you, kitten,” he hears Jack growl. “Up and at ‘em, c’mon.”

Rhys makes himself slide slowly out of bed, checking the clock as he does so. It hatefully blinks 09:02, which means he’s gotten slightly over five hours of sleep after a draining day. Joy.

He doesn’t have a spare set of clothes (it _is_ kind of hard to plan getting kidnapped), so getting dressed pretty much just involves pulling on his shirt, pants, vest, and socks from yesterday. If Jack doesn’t like how he smells, well, fuck him, he shouldn’t have kidnapped Rhys in the first place.

In case you were wondering, no, Rhys is not a morning person. Fuck you too.

Sliding into his shoes, he nods to Jack, who rolls his eyes at how long Rhys has taken before heading out the door. 

“We’re going to see how badly the nerds in PT have fucked up,” Jack announces, steering them towards the R&D building. He sounds gleeful at the prospect of having people to murder.

Yawning, Rhys says nothing, focusing on moving one foot in front of the other.

They descend the six floors to the lab, Jack making quick work of the security, and they’re striding towards a huddle of terrified scientists before Rhys knows it. 

Head scientist guy - Owen - is forcibly nudged forward by his colleagues. 

Jack doesn’t say a word, standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, foot tapping.

Owen gulps, then clears his throat. “We’ve, uh, made some progress with the Gortys Project, Handsome Jack, sir,” he says. “Gortys is fairly certain the problem lies with hypersensitive sensors.”

“What, so GP’s saying there’s trace amounts of _Eridium_ on Rhysie here?” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder at Rhys. Jack prowls forward, looming over Owen. There’s sadistic glee in his eyes. “I don’t think so.”

“W-well,” Owen stutters, glancing at Rhys, expression terror-stricken. 

Feeling generous, Rhys chooses to intervene. “Actually,” he begins.

Jack rounds on him, brows raised. “Kitten…” he trails off, tone warning.

Revealing his hand, he opens the compartment in his arm where his emergency chip of Eridium ore is stored. “Emergency cash,” he explains. “Credits aren’t always solid depending on where you are, so…” Rhys shrugs, brushing a hand through his hair, feigning embarrassment.

Jack’s expression shutters, and Owen looks rapturous, like he might start making out with Rhys for effectively saving his life.

“Sorry?” Rhys offers, eyes focused on Jack. “I should’ve mentioned it yesterday, but I figured this chip was too small to be counted as an Eridium source.”

Jack’s looking straight at Gortys, eyes calculating. “You’ve recalibrate those sensors?” he demands, and Gortys starts, surprised at being address so suddenly. She nods enthusiastically. 

“Absolutely! Sensors are now at optimal functionality!” she proudly declares, eyes flicking to Rhys once before flitting back to look at Jack.

“So? Where’s the closest source of Eridium?” He’s clearly impatient now, unsatisfied that this hasn’t played out the way he wanted it to.

Gortys stares off the the side for a second, then frowns. “It’s, uh, in The Outwash? In the Highlands?” she questions, looking unsure.

Jack waves a hand, dismissive. “Nah, we’ve got an Eridium extraction facility there, so that’s not it.”

They do? That’s useful information. Rhys can pass that along to Fiona, she’ll be able to find a way to make some cash out of it.

“Then, umm,” Gortys pauses, sensors at work again. “The Three Horns Valley?”

Jack’s face splits into a grin, wide and not the least bit comforting. “ _Now_ we’re talking,” he crows. 

“Okay,” he says, clearly having come to a decision. “You,” he points at Gortys. “You’re coming with us.”

The scientists look like they want to protest, but are quelled by a single look from him. 

Jack bounds for the door, filled with manic energy.

“Come along, Rhysie,” he calls. “We need you along for the ride.”

Jack summons his favourite helmeted goons via ECHOcomm once they’re back outside, Gortys rolling along behind them, looking inquisitively at everything. 

“Four Lancers, I want heavy firepower,” he orders. “We don’t know what’s moved in there.”

The guards scuttle off to scramble everything for their trip. Rhys is left reeling from how quickly everything’s moving. He’d hoped to have more time to work out a proper plan. He eyes the Lancers being loaded, and figures he’ll have no choice but to wing it. It’s not gotten him killed.

Yet.

There’s no time to sneak off to send Fiona and Sasha a quick update. Instead, he’s bundled off to Jack’s residence, where he’s made to change into a black version of Jack’s Hyperion sweater, a thick vest, and an even thicker jacket. Jack commandeers some minions to get him a pair of snow boots, and he’s ordered to change into that in short order.

“Is this really necessary?” Rhys grouses, trying to avoid the beanie Jack’s attempting to shove on his head.

“Where we’re going, pumpkin, you _don’t_ want to be underdressed. Have you ever seen anyone with frostbite?” Rhys shakes his head. “Yeah, thought so. _Not_ pretty.”

They head back out to the Lancers, now prepped, engines purring away. Their whole entourage is padded out in layers upon layers of thick clothing in the scorching Pandoran sun.

They look ridiculous.

The heat abates when he slides into the back of one of the Lancers, Jack climbing in after him. Gortys hops in surprisingly nimbly, settling herself across from both of them.

The Lancer starts, and they pull out of camp. Apprehension builds low in Rhys’s gut, making him tense.

Next to him, Jack rubs his hands together, excited. “Now, Rhysie,” he says, eyes alight. “Let’s go see what you’ve been keeping from me.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a migraine  
> i'm possibly dying  
> this fic won't leave me alone
> 
> *screams at computer*
> 
> someone hug me pls
> 
> (p.s. as promised, more plot. which thickens. hooray!)
> 
> EDIT: It's a day later now, and my migraine has mostly abated. I've looked it over, and GOD, I'm so sorry for the absolutely embarrassing amount of typos there were before! 
> 
> Also, you have _no idea_ how tempted I was to make Rhys says he was BORN THIS WAY, but the tiny part of me that possesses a modicum of dignity wrested control of the keyboard from my lizard brain and refused to let me write that. So blame the lack of Lady Gaga references in this chapter on sensible!Allie.


	5. just what you're running from

Funny story. 

Here’s how they meet:

 

 

 

It’s five minutes past 11:30, and Rhys is _still_ being kept waiting. He shoots the assistant behind the high desk a dirty look, and briefly wonders how pissed his mother would be if he just blew off this meeting. Rhys has _six_ critical-stage projects going on and three prototype tests waiting for him back at R &D, he doesn’t have time for this.

Standing, he picks his dossier up and strides past the assistant, towards the corridor that leads down to a pair of massive doors. Faintly, he hears her scramble from her seat and hurry after him.

“Sir, you can’t -”

He turns to shoot her a disdainful look, one he’s perfected over time and over far, _far_ too many sobbing staff reviews. She quells instantly. Rhys pushes the doors open, and he’s greeted by a cavernous room, lone desk on a raised dais at the end by a bank of windows, silhouetted by Elpis.

There’s a figure standing behind the desk, addressing someone cowering before it. They’re too far away to overhear what’s going on, but from the looks of things, guy #2 is in deep shit.

The assistant scampers forward, trying to make it look like she didn’t just fail miserably at her job as guard dog. “Rhys Carver, Head of S&S Munitions’ R&D, sir,” she announces.

The figure nods, dismissing her, and the assistant shoots Rhys a glare before darting out, shutting the doors behind her. They close with a firm _thunk,_ and Rhys swears he hears the man before the desk whimper, the sound carrying across the expanse of the room.

Rhys strolls towards the dais, taking his time to look around. An illuminated trophy case sits against a wall on the left of the dais, filled with some sort of - is that a _beard?_ He mentally shakes his head. 

As he approaches the desk, Handsome Jack spares him a glance. He cuts an imposing figure, towering over the dude who’s about to be shitcanned. Rhys meets his gaze head-on, one eyebrow raised.

What? He hates being kept waiting, and this is about making a point. It’s not as if Jack’s time is more important than his. 

The look Jack spares him turns intrigued, and he nods once in greeting. Rhys returns the nod with a small smile, settling himself onto one of the guest chairs before the desk, legs crossed. He props an elbow up against the arm rest, and rests his chin on a downturned hand.

Jack redirects his attention to the unfortunate man before him. “Now, Henderson,” he says, voice dripping with false sweetness. “Where _were_ we?”Henderson sputters something unintelligible.

“Riiiight, _right,”_ Jack says. “I was about to choke you to death.”

Rhys raises both eyebrows. Well. An interesting - if less than expected - development. 

There’s little struggle. Jack moves too fast for Henderson to react, and really, Rhys would be impressed if tiny flecks of his sweat hadn’t landed on him. Maybe he’d been too hasty to get a seat this close to the action.

He’s got Henderson’s neck constricted by the chain of his pocket watch. Henderson’s struggling, flailing for Rhys, fingers clawing, feet scraping the ground. Ignoring him, Rhys eyes the corded muscles of Jack’s hands in appreciation.

“You know,” he interrupts, and Jack almost falters in his action, quirking his head to look at him. The man clearly isn’t used to being interrupted mid-murder. “It’s strangulation,” Rhys corrects. “Not choking. Choking is something you do when you eat too fast.” He gestures towards Jack. “As you’re currently crushing his windpipe with your watch chain, what you’re doing is actually referred to as _strangling_.” 

Rhys shrugs at Jack’s _look._ “It’s good to know the difference.”

Henderson stops struggling then, the life leaving his body, and Jack drops him like a sack of potatoes. He slumps to the floor, dead. It’s almost like it’s been timed, if you wanted to time such a thing and happened to be standing around a to-be-murder scene with a stopwatch and a witty quip. 

Ignoring the body on the floor, Jack dusts his hands off, adjusts his jacket, and tucks his pocket watch back in its place, then rounds the table to perch himself off the edge of it, near Rhys. 

“Well, then, Mr. Carver,” be begins, and Rhys cuts in, “Rhys is fine.”

“Rhys, then,” Jack says. “I’m Handsome Jack. Have lunch with me?”

The smile on Jack’s face is dangerous. It’s charming and sharp and lethal, and the worst part is that he _knows_ it. There are flecks of blood on his face, slaked bloodlust in his eyes, and dark promise written all over him.

Rhys is _fascinated._ He can’t help but say yes.

He’s in the murder business, after all. They both are. This is what they _do._

 

 

___________

 

 

Jack informs him that the drive to Three Horns Valley will take five days. Rhys’s questions about why they couldn’t have taken a shuttle to the Valley instead of driving is met with a snide _well if you know how to pilot a shuttle through blizzards, you goddamned do it yourself then_. 

So. Yeah.

_Five_ days.

It’s mostly just tense silence in the car, Gortys piping up to ask the occasional question. She seems to think that Rhys and ‘Gentle Jim’ ( _God,_ that’d made him laugh for an hour _straight,_ Jack sulking in a corner) are _close_ friends of some kind, and keeps asking things about how they know each other and are they married and why not? Preeeeeeetty awkward business all round.

They drive for eight straight hours without taking a break, and Jack doesn’t even seem to notice he has company for most of it. He answers Gortys’s questions when he feels like it, pokes around on his ECHO, takes a few conference calls, and dozes off, all in that order.

Left to his own devices, Rhys ends up staring out the window at the miles and miles of wasteland, stuck in the rut of his memories. Thoughts about his abandoned projects at Scooter’s turn into thoughts about Fiona and Sasha, then of home, then of The Orbital, then Eden-6, then his family, then Jack.

It seems like everything in his life comes back down to goddamned Handsome fucking Jack.

The Lancer’s souped up, but the long hours are still hell on his body, and by the time they set up camp somewhere on the edges of the Dahl Headlands that night, Rhys can _feel_ the ache in his bones. It doesn’t help matters that every shift of his hips rubs against sensitive finger-shaped bruises, and every tilt of his neck unerringly draws Jack’s eyes to the dark, lingering hickeys that cover it.

It’s a surprisingly unpretentious camp. They haven’t brought pre-fab bunkers or anything fancy - it’s a tents-and-campfire affair, which Rhys wouldn’t have pegged Jack for. Sure, the interior of the tents are probably way nicer than anything you’d find on Pandora, but it’s still a tent, air mattress and air-conditioning or no.

They’re forced to share a tent, Gortys left locked in the Lancer. A security thing, he’s told, plus it would be stupid to pack a whole extra tent just for one person. He shrugs. It’s not like his opinion means much here, anyway.

As they bunk down on their separate mattresses, dinner of skag jerky and beans over with, Jack turns to him. “You know what I could do with right now?” Sighing, resigning himself to another of Jack’s long rants, Rhys shakes his head. “I could use a good steak. Medium rare, perfectly cooked, with a side of fries. _God_. Should have brought a chef with me.”

Sure, the food they’d had wasn’t great, but they were out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and it’s basically a camping trip. It’s not like the food they served up at camp was bad either, not that Rhys bets Jack ever ate at the cafeteria outhouse.

Tucked under a blanket, with the lights off, Rhys can hear Jack shifting around. Jack’d always been a restless sleeper, finding it hard to get to sleep, and when he did, never sleeping for more than five hours at a stretch. It fuelled rumours that he never needed sleep, which he loved and actively encouraged.

“You remember that restaurant we went to on Helios? The one with that steak?” Jack begins again.

At length, Rhys nods, before realising Jack can’t see him in the dark. “ _L’Étalon_ , yeah. What about it?”

“We shut it down a couple of years ago, after they had to get a new chef. New one got set up, but the food’s shit.” More restless shifting from Jack. “Could really do with their steak now.”

“ _Why_ are you still going on about that?” Rhys grumbles. “Go the hell to sleep.”

He can hear the covers rustle, and Jack sit up. “Why, cupcake? Don’t like remembering the good ‘ol days with Jack?” he laughs, low and bitter. 

Rhys is so angry it hurts to breathe. “You know,” he whispers, not trusting his voice. “Murder tends to take the glow off any relationship.”

“ _Murder?”_ Jack spits. “I saved your fucking _life_.”

What the _hell?_

“Wait -” he says, furious and uncomprehending at once.

“No,” Jack cuts him off. “We’re done here.”

There’s the sound of covers rustling again, and of Jack settling back down. Rhys can hear their breaths in the silence of the night, harsh and heavy with emotion, a mocking parody of sex.

He isn’t sure how much time passes, but Jack’s breathing eventually evens out, and he drifts off to sleep.

Rhys wishes he could say he follows, but he stays up long into the night, watching the unquiet dark.

 

 

___________

 

 

But hey, Rhys didn’t get to finish telling you his story, did he?

So. The next bit goes like this:

 

 

 

Jack takes him to _L’Étalon_ , one of the fanciest restaurants on Helios. As they stroll past a queue at least fifty people long, Jack tells him that you need a reservation six months in advance to even _hope_ to get a table. Not that it applies to Jack, obviously. It’s showboating, of course, and Rhys replies that the wait is _seven_ months to get into Amber on The Orbital.

Competitive smirk on his face, Jack gestures after the maitre’d, who leads them to private section, a single table for two laid out. It’s a taster menu, so they don’t have to order, and after a bottle of wine is brought to the table by a stuttering sommelier, they find themselves evaluating one another from across the table.

“Sooooo,” Jack begins. “Rhys _Carver?_ As in, Sarah and Saul _Carver?”_

“Wonderful,” Rhys retorts drily. “You can identify identical words.”

Jack leans back, whistles. He swirls the wine in his glass, raising it to inhale a whiff. Satisfied, he holds the glass aloft in a mocking toast. “To the royalty in our midst, then.” Rhys picks up his glass to take a sip, the Malbec sliding warm and velvety down his throat.

Holding Jack’s gaze, Rhys sets the glass down, reclining in his seat. “I assume you have grander designs for bringing me here than simply keeping me fed?”

Jack’s eyes are hooded, but no less sharp. “Well, cupcake, you certainly don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

Fingers tapping on the table, Rhys smiles, equal parts charming and distant, just a little vicious. “Not when I have time-sensitive projects waiting for me back on The Orbital, no.”

Jack clutches his heart, acts like he’s been hurt and shot. Their first course arrives, light and foamy and delicate. They dig in, cleaning out the fragile glass cup it arrives in in short order. 

“I’ll cut out the bullshit, then,” Jack says, waving for the course to be taken away. He leans forward, eyes intent, and Rhys thinks he understands what his mother means when she says that Jack has this magnetic, charismatic quality about him. “I need you,” he says.

Brows raised, Rhys smirks. “I can’t say I’m surprised, but that’s more direct than I’m used to.”

Jack treats him to a long, slow once-over. “Oh,” he purrs. “We’ll get to that later. But no,” he says, voice slipping back to its perfunctory, no-nonsense business tone. “I need you to consult for Hyperion’s R&D. The previous head had an, ah, _accident,_ and there’s no one suitable to replace him with the know-how or experience. We’ve got people who know their technical shit but have no freaking clue what the industry needs, and we have people who know the business but are crap at tech. That’s where you come in.”

“Well,” Rhys says, taken aback. His mother had made no mention of this when she’d sent him here for this meeting. He’d come prepared to make a sales pitch for their weapons, maybe charm Jack out of money for investing into S&S, not to be asked to become Hyperion’s R&D consultant. Their second course arrives, a pair of perfectly seared Demophon Emperor scallops. 

Aware that Jack is still watching him intently, Rhys picks up his knife and fork, takes his first bite, and thinks. “First,” he states, having made up his mind, “What’s in this for me?”

“Mmm, a man after my own heart.” Jack pulls out his ECHO, makes a few quick taps, and hands it over to him.

Reading the ECHOpad, Rhys can feel his eyebrows rise of their own volition. “That’s…a generous offer,” he allows. It’s more than fucking _generous,_ it’s basically a bribe. Hyperion’s willing to pay S &S _fifty million_ credits for the loan of their R &D Head. The offer doesn’t state the duration of the job, but it’s capped at three years, which, for _fifty million credits,_ is still ridiculously good. And the chance to direct Hyperion development policy? You can’t put a price on that.

“We pay for only the best,” Jack says, and the seductive timbre in his voice is back. “And if it’s the _Carver_ scion himself…” he shrugs, then smiles slowly. “Worth every credit.”

Rhys slides the ECHOpad across the table to Jack before polishing off the scallops. A waiter appears at his side to remove the empty plate, then returns with the third course, a Heran fowl parfait with chutney. 

At length, he says, “I have commitments at S&S. They have to come first.”

“Sure, kitten,” Jack replies, and from his expression, he knows he’s got the canary. Picking up a fresh fork and knife, he starts on the parfait. “Wouldn’t expect any less.”

“I expect all accommodation and utilities to be provided for, and I want complete creative freedom on this.”

“Goes without saying,” Jack agrees. “You want to do your own thing, that’s fine with me, as long as it’ll fire straight and sell well.”

Rhys shoots him his most scathing look, and Jack laughs. “God, you’re about as harmless as a kitten, aren’t ya?” Waving off Rhys’s chagrined huff, he nods. “Yeah, I get it, you’re the brains in S&S, you’re not about to come up with some shit product, don’t get your panties in a bunch.”

Rhys _hates_ being belittled. “I don’t think you understand how this is going to work.” He reaches into his dossier and pulls out his own ECHOpad. Nodding at Jack’s ECHO on the table next to him, he asks, “You have a background in programming, don’t you? That ECHO, that’s your own encryption?” Jack nods, and Rhys can tell that he’s equally wary and curious.

Rhys activates his own hacking software, one he’s spent the past three months perfecting. Within the minute, it beeps, and begins downloading everything from Jack’s ECHO. He flips it around with a flourish so Jack can see.

Checking the timer, he can’t help but add, “48 seconds to crack your encryption. That’s actually the longest anyone’s code has ever held out, so hey, good job.”

Jack looks murderous, and Rhys would be terrified if he were anyone else. “Playtime’s over,” he growls, remote shutting the ECHO and cutting off the data transfer. 

Satisfied, and more than slightly smug, Rhys leans back in his chair, unable to stop the sly smile from creeping up his face. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” he quips, just to see Jack’s face twist.

After a beat spent studying him, the anger fades from Jack’s face, transforming into something more potent and infinitely more dangerous. His smile is sensuous, exciting and laden with promise and forbidden fruit.

“Oh, Rhysie,” he says. “We’re going to have so much _fun_ together _.”_

 

 

__________

 

 

It’s a pretty cute story, huh?

Like his mother used to say, though: it’s all fun and games until someone gets killed.

 

 

The next day, Rhys gets the cold shoulder. They wake, wash up, eat dry and rubbery skag jerky, break camp, and load up the Lancers, and Jack still won’t say a word to him. For the most part, he doesn’t even look at Rhys.

They’re in separate cars today, Rhys riding with Gortys, Jack sliding into a different Lancer. The tension in the air’s thick - you could cut it with a butter knife, if you were weird enough to think a butter knife was really the best tool for cutting things to be carrying around.

It’s palpable enough that Gortys, champion of social obliviousness, notices. “Did you guys have a fight?” she whispers during one of the breaks from driving, although it’s less a whisper and more a normal-volumed question asked in a hushed voice, so it carries to where Jack is standing anyway and he shoots Rhys a dirty look.

“Sort of,” he answers, avoiding Jack’s eyes and clambering back into the Lancer. Gortys follows after him.

“What’s ‘sort of’?” she asks, and Rhys is totally no master of dissuasion. 

“It’s, well,” he’s still treating her like a kid, he can’t help it. “You know when you’re talking to a friend, and they say something you don’t think they meant to and you didn’t know about, and it’s really, _really_ awkward?”

“Not really,” Gortys says, looking embarrassed. “I mean, I’ve never had any friends before you guys, so…” she trails off, and Rhys feels horrible for her. 

He hugs her, and it’s kind of awkward because she’s spherical and made of metal, but it’s good.

“Yeah, that’s what happened between us, so things are weird right now.”

“But you’ll work it out, right?” Gortys asks, and no robot should ever be allowed to look this hopeful or adorable, it’s criminal. He’s also stumped by the question, because how do you explain to someone what they’ve been through? There could be libraries dedicated to what happened between them and it wouldn’t be enough.

“Sure,” he replies at length, unwilling to complicate things further.

Not looking entirely convinced, Gortys nods, and she’s halfway through asking about how his mechanical arm works for the fifth time when -

Have you ever been in a vehicle that’s been caught by the wave of a rocket launcher’s blast?

It’s not fun. At all.

Actually, it hurts like a _motherfucker._

 

 

__________

 

 

When he comes to, he’s slumped over on the ground, mouth full of sand. Distantly, Rhys can make out raised voices and harsh tones, and he mentally groans. 

This just keeps getting from bad to worse, and then from worse to worst, and then they really need to make up new words for the friggin’ crapbag situations he always manages to find himself in.

He struggles to sit up, leaning back against the upturned Lancer as he does. He can make out the figures now, Jack and one badass looking grandma, arguing in the distance.

Rhys staggers to his feet, looking around for Gortys. He finds her huddled in the interior of the upturned car, hiding from the noise.

“Hey, hey,” he soothes, and she looks up at him with trembling eyes. “It’s okay, you just stay here and remain quiet, alright? I’ll go check things out.” She nods and reverses deeper into the Lancer.

Picking his way across the debris of the Lancer - he notices with annoyance that theirs was the only one of the four that got so thoroughly blown up - he draws his repeater pistol.

He can pick out what they’re saying - pretty much just threats from both sides to blow the other sky high if they don’t get what they want. 

Rhys finally draws abreast to Jack, staring at the lady across from them. She’s packing some solid firepower, and he wouldn’t want to be a victim of any punches from her, if the way she’s single-handedly hefting that rocket launcher is any indication. 

He jerks his head towards her, eyes on Jack and tired of all this bullshit. He isn’t suicidal, but he’s feeling numbly fearless. “Who’s the grandma?” he asks, and the woman’s face twists into a sneer.

Jack sends him a warning - but amused - look. 

“I can see why you keep him around,” the woman says, and Rhys shifts his attention to her. “He’s feisty.” She grins, feral and cruel. “I’m Vallory.”

“He keeps me around for my brains, my dashing good looks are just a bonus,” Rhys retorts. “Are we done here?”

Vallory snarls at the slight, and her lackeys shift, weapons at the ready. “I wouldn’t be so lippy, boy,” she says. “Your friends - what were their names again?” She taps her booted foot, pretending to think. “Ah, Fiona and Sasha, yes. They owe me ten million credits, and I’m normally a generous woman, but they’ve gone and run off with my son now.” 

She looks Rhys up and down. “So now I don’t _just_ want my ten million credits. I want to kill them, but since they’ve disappeared, I’m going to kill _you_ instead.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so a few things about this, because I need to share my thoughts (and am totally down if anyone wants to hit me up to soundboard characters/plot/TFTBL - I'm on [Tumblr](http://astoryaboutwar.tumblr.com/)):
> 
> a) Young!Rhys is totally a brat, but hey, he's 21, I think anyone in his position would be kind of cocky and bit of a little shit at that age. Jack totally loves it, though. YEAH JACK YOU TAP THAT.
> 
> b) I know Rhys is waaaaay more chill with murder and shit than in the actual game, but he *is* the heir to a multi-trillion credit arms-dealing company, so that bb's seen some shit and he's way more cynical than TFTBL!Rhys.
> 
> c) I had a good friend point out that ze thought that Jack here was maybe slightly OOC, but from where I'm writing it, he's only floundering and vulnerable because it's _Rhys_ , and they've both knocked each other down and picked each other up and broken each other to tiny, fractured pieces, and it's because of this that they have this unique ability to cut straight to the bone with each other. Yeah, we get Rhys's POV here, but Jack's pretty twisted up about this too, he's just arrogant and proud and unprepared to show it.
> 
> d) The restaurant they went to is called THE STALLION. My French is shit so I may have translated it wrongly, and if I have, please do let me know! I've been desperately trying to think of a way to include Butt Stallion in this fic, but there's no way I'll be able to, so here's my tribute. SORRY NOT SORRY.


	6. no rest for the wicked

You know how in the movies, when two badasses confront each other, there’s always this epic fight scene-throwdown-type thing with quippy one-liners, and it’s a ‘two people walk in, one person walks out’ kind of deal, with sweeping music and dramatic shots?

Yeah.

Not like that in real life.

_At all._

It’s pretty much a scramble of bullets flying around, frantic scrambling to get to cover to try not to get hit, and a confusion of noise and chaos.

Rhys has his repeater pistol in hand, and at point-blank range, it shouldn’t even be a question of hitting Vallory.

But the fact of the matter is this: Vallory’s packing a lot of weight, what with her rocket launcher and all, but the lady moves _fast._ He’d fired two shots before she’d barely finished her death-threat-sentence, and he’d _missed,_ and then she’d ordered her goons down on their heads. Jack’d obviously retaliated, and now they’re caught in a firefight.

Were their numbers even, the Hyperion guards would be crushing this, but as things stand, they’re outnumbered two-point-six to one, so despite their tech superiority, it’s an even match. It’s frustrating.

From what Rhys can tell, Gortys is still safely ensconced in the upturned Lancer, so as long as she stays there and Vallory’s rocket launcher stays far away from her, she should be fine. He’s crouched behind some rocks next to Jack, who’s whipped out double pistols from under his jacket and is firing away maniacally, grin on his face.

It’s not too bad, actually. Rhys has taken out four of Vallory’s men so far, and there are about thirty, so if you add up everyone else’s kills, that’s about a third of them down. I mean, yeah, Vallory’s busted two of four of their Lancers, but they can still limp on if they survive this.

“Hey, cupcake, a little _focus_ please?” he hears Jack yell, and dodges a sudden hail of bullets concentrated his way.

Rhys turns to shout back a reply, but all that he manages is a _whoof_ as he’s bodily tackled to the ground by one of the henchmen, and then he’s scrabbling to keep out of the way of the couple of brass knuckles being punched his way.

 

 

__________

 

 

He's ten feet away when Jack goes down, and the earth is trembling from beneath his feet with the force of Vallory's bombardment.

Rhys can taste ash in his mouth, and all that sliver of time narrows down to is his need to get to Jack's side. 

Don’t dissect what that means. _Don’t._

Jack isn't getting back up. Rhys rolls out from cover, putting a bullet through the brain of one goon stupid enough to come for him and snapping the neck of the other.

He unloads his spent clip, fishing a dropped one off the floor and reloading. He's five feet from Jack. 

Rhys drops low just as a knife whizzes past his ear, and a heartbeat and shot later, that's another of Vallory's men down.

Jack's bleeding sluggishly from a wound in his side, far enough to the right that Rhys think he might be lucky enough that it hasn't hit his stomach. Pressing on the wound, he checks. It hasn’t, but the bullet is vicious and barbed, possibly poisoned, and the flesh in his side is ribboned red.

Out in the Headlands, with no one but carrion and sand for miles, it's not the kind of wound you come back from.

But Jack’s still breathing, so there’s still time. He shuts his eyes briefly. Fuck. _Fuck._ Okay, he can do this.

Rhys hits the complex sequence on his arm that pops open the compartment where his Eridium chip is stored. He picks it up with fumbling fingers, nearly dropping it, before popping it in his mouth. There’s a cool heat and vaguely sweet taste that blooms on his tongue, and he forces himself to dry swallow. 

It takes a couple of seconds, but he can feel the rush soon enough. _Shit_. He hasn’t done this in a long time. He takes a breath, then another, feeling the Eridium settle in his vein, course under his skin. 

Crouched over Jack, he can see the way his chest stutters up and down in breaths, each excruciating and long. It’s good that he’s passed out for this. Leaning in, he pulls a hunting knife out of its sheath from Jack’s holster belt. He sets it to his wrist, where a day-old, inch-long incision sits.

Gritting his teeth, he clenches his fist, and slashes down, deeper and harder than before. Blood flows out in a steady stream, some falling onto the dirt. He holds his wrist to the wound in Jack’s side, torn and gaping, and lets his blood trickle down onto it. 

Gunfire bursts overhead, too close to where they are behind cover for comfort. It’s slow going, and it takes nearly a full minute for Rhys to see the bullet expelled, clattering to the ground. It’s another long minute before edges of Jack’s wound stitch shut. 

When it does, he allows himself to lower to the ground, willing the cut on his wrist to heal. This part is excruciating. He focuses on the wound in his skin, holding an image of it knitting back together, cell by cell, nerve by nerve, in his mind. The pain of it is agonising. He’s breathing hard through his nose, eyes squeezed shut, dizzy with the sudden loss of blood, mechanical arm clutching his flesh wrist. 

Rhys nearly passes out when he feels the cut finally knit together. Jack’s still out cold. 

He’s exhausted. Any remaining Eridium in his body should help to replenish the blood that was lost, but before that happens he’s going to remain lightheaded and nauseated.

The battle’s dying down now, short sputters of gunfire ringing out. He can’t hear Vallory’s rocket launcher. Alarm bells are going off at the back of his mind. He’s tired, drained, and he doesn’t want to _think,_ doesn’t want to dwell on why he couldn’t just _let Jack die._  

There are footsteps behind him, high-heeled and heavy.

“ _There_ you are,” Vallory growls.

Rhys tries to scramble to his feet, but the fatigue in his bones makes him sluggish, and he slips, lurching to the side, hitting the ground hard. He has his pistol in hand, trembling as he tries to align the sights to her.

Vallory smacks his pistol out of his shaky hand, and it lands four feet away on the dirt, out of reach. It’s a hard hit that leaves his exhausted body reeling. 

“Now, now,” she coos, “Let’s not have any of that.” She tilts her head, regards Jack slumped unconscious on the ground. She nudges him with a booted foot. “I’m going to kill this Hyperion scum,” she tells Rhys. “Then I’m going to get to you, don’t you worry.”

Rhys can barely keep his eyes open, his body shutting down after the strain he’s put on it, years out of practice. Vallory’s words faintly register in his mind, and he’s distantly aware of his surroundings. He sees her heft her launcher, picking up a shell to reload, and panic grips his heart in a vice, terror choking him, and he reaches for Jack with his hand, scrabbling at the ground for even the slightest hold on him.

“Oh,” he hears Vallory mock. “How _adorable_.”

He manages to hook a finger into Jack’s belt. 

Shouldering her launcher, Vallory takes aim, cruel grin on her face, scarred eye watching him. Her finger twitches on the trigger, and Rhys - Rhys stretches deep inside himself, to parts he hasn’t used in a long while, to powers he’d rather not have - and he -

_Pulls._

He feels something inside him unravel from where he’s kept it dormant all these years.

The ground shakes, and the wind dies down. Sounds cease, then abruptly return. 

A long shadow falls across them, broad and long and cool in the blistering heat. 

Rhys lets out a shaky breath, suddenly, viciously relieved. He hadn’t been sure if he still could, but it’d been like riding a bike. He raises his head, craning his neck.

“What the _hell?”_ he hears Vallory shriek, and gunfire is redirected, her rocket launcher hissing as she pulls the trigger.

He takes a deep breath, pulling Jack with all his strength, and they roll away from Vallory, they’re _so close_ -

“We’re not done here, boy,” she snarls, stalking to them, and Rhys yanks Jack with his mechanical arm, rolling another couple of feet -

Rhys staggers to a crouch, pressing his hands to the air in front of him, _seeking, parting_ - 

_Yes._

One hand clutching Jack, they stumble into the Vault of the Deserter, the fabric of reality sealing shut behind them.

 

 

__________

 

 

When Rhys comes to, the first thing he can think of is that he left Gortys behind, and they need to go back for her.

The second is that there’s a gun pointed straight at him, and it’s kind of sad that Rhys can say it’s not the first time he’s woken up like this.

“Gortys,” he gasps, struggling to sit up.

Jack’s down low on the ground, sitting back on his haunches. He’s shed his jacket, dried blood flaking from the vest and sweater he’s still wearing. It hurts Rhys more than he’d like to admit that he’s got a pistol trained on him, gaze cold and steady.

“Back up, Rhysie.”

Rhys lets himself flop back to the floor, staring up at the cavernous ceiling of the Vault. He tries not to panic. He’s cold, spent, and he just wants to curl up and sleep for another ten years. He doesn’t want to think about how he’s going to weasel his way out of this. He doesn’t want to deal with _Jack._  

“What’s your freaking deal?” he huffs.

Jack doesn’t say a word, just stands and wanders a few feet away from where they’d landed. The Vault of the Deserter is immense, the ways most Vaults are. But where the Warrior was flame and heat, the Deserter is cool and silent; the way the Traveller glowed luminescent, single bridge spanning a rocky expanse, the Deserted glows pale, surface grey and smooth, extending in all directions, curving up at the edges.

There’s a faint light in the distance, where whatever this Vault was made to hide is presumably kept. What it is Rhys doesn’t know. At this moment, he doesn’t give a shit.

He sighs, holding his hand out to study it. The cut’s scabbed over now, brown and itchy. He absent-mindedly uses his thumb to rub at the nails of his fingers. He pauses, flexing his hand, extending his fingers, then curling them into a fist.

“Where the _hell_ are we?” Jack calls, gun unwavering.

‘Somewhere safe,” Rhys replies, glib.

“Ha _ha_ , pumpkin, wow, your sass is _exactly_ what we need right now, _thank_ you,” Jack sneers. 

“Great, no problem,” he snarks back.

Jack’s lips twist into a snarl, and he stalks over to Rhys, grabbing him by his shirtfront. “ _You,”_ he seethes, “Are going to tell me exactly _where_ we are, _what_ the fuck you are, and then you’re going to take us back and I will _pick you goddamned apart_.”

Unfazed, and abruptly sick and so _done_ with Jack’s bullshit, Rhys eyes him with contempt. “You wanted Project Titan?” he spits, and spreads his arms. “Here you go. Now get the _fuck_ out of my face.”

He can tell Jack’s stumped. It’s a nice change.

“You’re welcome,” he can’t help but continue. “Saved you months of being led on a chase.”

Jack tackles him, and they grapple on the ground, hard punches and kicks and elbows, and if Rhys weren’t so exhausted, he might have stood a chance.

Jack pins him to the ground by his wrist with one hand, the other wrapping around his throat, pressure hard enough to hurt and gasp in breaths.

“Go ahead,” Rhys taunts, voice wheezing. “Finish what you started.”

He can’t read Jack’s expression. It flits from rage, to hurt, to disgust, and it’s the last that wounds him deeper than any knife.

Jack drops him and backs away, bending to pick his pistol up. He checks it over, then points it back at Rhys. 

“Talk,” he demands, face stony.

Rhys heaves an exaggerated sigh. He’s reasonably sure Jack won’t shoot him. Not yet, anyway.

“What about?”

“What else?” Jack snaps, and it’s a visible, physical effort for him to keep his temper in check. “Project Titan, you crapwit.”

“What’s there to tell? Freaky powers, Vaults, that’s pretty much it.”

“From the top, kitten,” Jack says, voice silky, eyes hard and glittering, and Rhys decides he’s pushed his luck far enough.

Rhys shrugs, then sighs. “I was born this way. Gave my parents a heart attack when the babysitter called and said I’d vanished, and then gave them another when I reappeared in their bedroom out of nowhere. So they checked it out, found that I was disappearing into random Vaults. S&S cracked open a few for real, because hey, _kickass alien tech_ , then they decided it was too suspicious to open more, so they made me swear to never tell anyone, but figured it was a waste to let me do nothing, so they grabbed a bunch of people to study me, and _ta-dah!_ Project Titan.” He waves a hand. “There. The End. Happy now?”

Jack studies him, and there’s something in his posture and expression that Rhys can’t put his finger on. “This,” he says. “All of this. Would you _ever_ have told me any of it?”

Rhys meets his gaze, then shakes his head mutely.

The corner of Jack’s lips mirthlessly curls upwards. “Thought so,” he sneers.

This - Rhys and his _abilities_ \- is everything Jack has ever wanted. It’s the ultimate jackpot. With this, Jack could crush Pandora in a _day._ The other planets - no, the _galaxies?_ Hyperion’s to rule. _Jack’s_ to rule.

Rhys _knows_ Jack. He knows him intimately, cruelly, and wholly. And because he does, he forces himself to his feet, swaying with the effort. Jack’s standing several feet away, pistol still drawn and aimed at him. He approaches Jack, each step a slow and immense effort.

“Hey, hey,” Jack warns. “No games, pumpkin, back the hell up.”

Rhys ignores him, drawing up to stand before him, body shaking with exertion. He curls an arm around his middle to steady himself, the other going up to trace Jack’s jaw.

Jack inhales sharply, but makes no move to throw him off. 

Leaning in, Rhys presses a kiss to his lips, soft and dry.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and at Jack’s bewildered look, he _shoves._

Jack falls, eyes betrayed, through a gap in the air that he’s opened up. The gap seals itself behind him without a sound, and all Rhys is left with is the sound of his own blood thundering in his ears, his breath panting out of his lungs, and an almost tangible note of regret.

Rhys clenches his fist tight, nails digging into his palm. For a moment, he shuts his eyes and just breathes, calming his pulse and forcing himself to order his mind. He has no time to waste. Jack will be fine - he’s dumped him back in the Dahl Headlands, a couple of miles from the Hyperion camp. He’ll be roaring and out for blood.

Rhys needs to find Fiona and Sasha.

 

 

__________

 

 

For once, Rhys is glad his sisters are paranoid con artists who’ve planned a dozen different boltholes and safe houses, each for a specific fucked-up situation. 

He still searches through four safe houses before finding the one they’re in, though, so maybe the excessive paranoia is a bit much.

He needs sleep fast. Being passed out doesn’t really do much to restore energy, and at the rate he’s burning through his abilities, he’s going to pass out again soon if he doesn’t get some shuteye. 

They’re in the T-Bone Junction safe house, a tiny hovel that has a ceiling so low he has to stoop to fit. He knocks on the door, huffing when he doesn’t get a response, setting to work picking the lock.

The door swings open, and he’s greeted by the sight of the barrel of Sasha’s SMG pointed straight at his face. Not the first time he’s had a gun jammed in his face today, _yay_.

 “Oh my _god,_ ” he hears Sasha shout, and the SMG is put aside and he’s engulfed in a bone-crushing hug.

“Can’t. Breathe,” he wheezes, and Sasha lets go, stepping back to eye him critically. 

“Where’ve you _been?_ ” she demands. “We tried to call you when Vallory came after us, but you weren’t answering any of our calls or ECHOmails.”

“Yeah,” Rhys says. “About Vallory. We’ve met. Terrifying woman.”

There’s a muffled _hey, that’s my mother you’re talking about, you watch your mouth!_ from the inside of the safe house, and Sasha glances back before ushering him in, shutting the door behind them.

“Who’s that?” Rhys asks, eyeing the smouldering anger-ball of a man squished next to Fiona on a tiny sofa. 

“Rhys, meet August,” Fiona introduces, and _oh,_ so _this_ is August. He’s only ever heard about him through Fiona and Sasha. “He’s with us. For now, at least.” She side-eyes him suspiciously.

“Uh, hey, man,” Rhys greets, waving awkwardly. August nods jerkily in response, and that’s introductions done. 

“ _You,”_ Sasha demands, “Need to tell us _exactly_ what’s been going on. Janey got news that some pissing match went down off Wayward Pass, and next thing we know you’re off the grid and Hyperion’s shooting people up because Jackass is missing. And what’s this about you meeting Vallory?”

Fiona lets out a disgusted _ugh_ at the mention of her name, getting a death glare from August.

“Long story,” Rhys starts. “After I managed to sneak a call through, Jack bundled us off to Three Horns Valley to find this Eridium source with the Gortys Project, which is basically a project Atlas made to find a Vault. Gortys is great, she’s a tiny robot, you’ll love her.” He ignores the disbelieving looks sent his way. “So we’re on our way through the Dahl Headlands, and on the second day Vallory blasts us sky high, demanding ten million credits and my life.” Fiona and Sasha shriek in anger. He waves them off. “There was a firefight, lots of bullets, and Jack went down, so I had to drag him to safety, and that place turned out, uh -”

So this is where he isn’t sure how to continue. Fiona and Sasha know about his S&S background, but nothing about Titan. He’s tried to find numerous ways to bring it up before, but no matter how he tried, it was always going to be weird going ‘hey, guess what, I have freaky powers and I can summon Vaults and talk to Vault monsters. Also, haha, my blood is sort of Eridium.’

…Which is basically what he does now.

“I took him to a Vault.” When he’s met with bug-eyed stares, he soldiers on. “So this thing Jack wanted me for? It was this S&S top-secret thing called Project Titan, which some IT nerds managed to unearth but couldn’t figure out. Turns out, there isn’t really a Project Titan, because, you know, that’s me. I’m Project Titan. Sort of. I’m a Titan. I summon Vaults. And talk to Vault monsters. And my blood has Eridium in it.”

Fiona is the first one to speak. “This…” she squints at him. “This is a joke, right?” At his withering look, she straightens. “Okay, not a joke.” She looks away, then shakes her head, then looks at him again. “ _Seriously?”_

Sasha joins in. “But Titans aren’t _real,”_ she insists. “They’re like Sirens. It’s a rumour people pass around because it’s cool and _impossible_.”

“They said Vaults weren’t real either,” Rhys tiredly points out. “And Sirens exist. I’ve met one.”

More shrieks from Fiona and Sasha.

“Wait,” August cuts in for the first time, brow furrowed, voice gruff. “You said you took Jack to a Vault. You did this in front of my _mother?”_

Rhys nods, dreading what he’s about to say.

“ _Jeez._ We’re _doomed._ You realise she’s never going to stop hunting you, right?”

“I mean, she didn’t see it really, so I don’t know if she knows what she saw, but I figured she wouldn’t let up,” he replies, uncertain. “And since I ditched Jack before coming here, we need to leave _now.”_

“But my grilled sandwich!” Sasha protests. 

“Yeah, okay,” Rhys agrees, because he can smell that in the pan, and Sasha makes the most freaking amazing grilled sandwiches. “You can take that along.”

At Fiona’s _look,_ he raises his hands in surrender. “Yes, okay, I know this isn’t over, but we need to get moving. I swear I’ll answer all your questions, and yes, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, please don’t shoot me.”

Satisfied, she crosses the room to grab her stuff. Sasha’s busy packing her sandwich and other supplies, and August is…pretty much just sitting on the couch brooding. Yeah. Okay. Cool, he can do that, that’s fine.

Rhys can hear cars approaching outside. “We need to leave _now,”_ he says, reaching inside himself to tug at his power. Fiona unfurls her gun, Sasha shoulders her SMG, bag in hand, and August stands.

The sound of booted footsteps draw up to the front door. 

“Let’s do this,” Rhys mutters, and he opens a gap through to the Vault. 

“Damn,” he hears Fiona mumble. “That’s cool.” She takes a breath, then walks in without a backwards glance. Sasha follows with a shrug, and Rhys is pretty damn touched that they trust him so much. August is more hesitant, but he can’t really blame the guy.

“ _Go,”_ he nudges, and August finally steps through just as the door’s kicked down.

“Shit,” he murmurs, and throws himself through the gap, willing it shut behind them.

The gap flows back together, edges pressing themselves back to seamlessness. Through the holes that remain, Rhys can make out Jack, glowering at him. He’s yelling something, but he can’t make out what.

Rhys stands, holding his gaze, before snapping the rest of the gap shut.

“You okay?” Fiona hollers from further in the Vault.

“I’m fine,” he replies. He walks towards the group, jaw set. “Let’s keep moving.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know, I'm not 100% sure on this chapter.
> 
> *shrugs*
> 
> Comments are love! Seriously, I'm feeling pretty meh over how this turned out.


	7. never good at controlling me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in getting this up - I threw out my original outline because I didn't feel like it was going where I wanted it to, and so had to frantically scramble to come up with one that did.
> 
> To that end, I am unbelievably grateful for cherishedsaulie, without whom this chapter (and subsequent ones) would be much, much poorer. Thanks for being an amazing enabler and soundboard!

 

You know what Rhys misses most about The Orbital? 

The view.

I mean, yeah, Helios has that kickass view of space and Elpis and Pandora, which is great, but Pandora is pretty much just dirt yellow and Elpis is grey and scarred up.

The Orbital, though? 

It had the most amazing view of Eden-6. From the Galactica Gallery, you could see the planet up close (or, you know, _fairly_ close, as far as being in space is concerned), all sweeping moss plains and cerulean oceans. You could see the white swirls from storms, the colossal satellite array of Hunter’s Gore, the deep green of the Verdant Sea. 

He misses that. He thinks about going back sometimes, but it’s all Hyperion property now. All S&S buildings stripped of their logos, empty metal shells of a bygone era. He’d go back, but he’d just end up finding everything so familiar yet foreign, and that’s going to cut deeper and more viciously than any knife. Jack - Jack always knew how to do that to him.

So. Yeah. There’s nothing for him left on Eden-6, except graves he should probably visit, a legacy he no longer has access to, and the lingering, bitter taste of regret.

 

 

__________

 

 

It’s been four days since they left T-Bone Junction, and they’re going stir-crazy hanging out in the Vault of the Deserter. Sure, they’d agreed it was the best idea to wait it out in the Vault where _literally_ no one could find them, but still. Four people with _issues_ stuck together in the same few square yards with no entertainment? Bad mix. 

Rhys and August pretty much established an unspoken agreement to give each other a wide berth from day one, which is why it’s so surprising when August, apropos of nothing, plonks himself down on the dirt next to him. 

He has a gun propped on his thigh, tapping away at his knee. If Rhys didn’t know better, he’d say this was basically shaping up to be an interrogation at gunpoint, but from what he can tell, this is just default August. Gun-toting, surly, and generally assholish. 

He shrugs mentally. If he can manage Jack’s dickishness, he can _definitely_ manage August. 

“Sup?” he prompts, when August remains silent.

“You know,” August finally says. “I think we’re getting the raw deal here.” He gestures to himself, Fiona, and Sasha. “We know why we’re running from my ma, but we don’t have any _fucking_ idea why you’ve got Handsome Jack on _your_ tail. You swan in here with your freaky-as-shit abilities and tell us we need to go and we’re supposed to believe your story? So I think you’d better come clean. With _all_ of it.”

Rhys glances at Fiona who looks murderous. “Yeah, no, August, _you’re_ the only one out of the loop here, so tough luck, buddy,” she chimes in.

“Yeah?” Rhys may not like the man much, but he can respect a guy who draws his gun _that_ quickly. Probably leftover conditioning from the times his mother made him practice. “Well, I don’t like it _one_ bit, so you’d better start talking.” August is up in a low crouch now, gun aimed at Rhys. 

Seriously, though, people need to _stop_ pointing guns at him.

Sasha’s on her feet, SMG aimed at August, and even _Fiona’s_ drawn her gun, which, given that _Sasha’s_ the trigger-happy one, means Rhys needs to defuse this _fast_ or August here is going to get shot.

“Heeeeey hey hey,” he says, standing, palms out, arms outstretched, the universal pose for _stand the hell down, folks._ “It’s alright, people, let’s all be adults here.” At the look Fiona shoots (hah, _shoots)_ him, he hurriedly amends his statement. “ _Non-_ gun-toting adults.” He points a finger at August. “Anger-ball over here’s kind of got a point. I mean, I’d be pretty pissed off if a random dude rocked up, fired off mysterious powers, told me I now have two of the baddest villains on Pandora on my ass, and whisked me away. So, okay, August, fair play.”

No one’s lowered their guns. “C’mon, guys, _seriously?”_

Fiona at least has the decency to look sheepish. 

Rhys turns back to August. “Okay, so. I get that you have questions, and I’ll answer as many as I can, but no promises. Fire away.” He pauses, then hastily corrects himself. “Not _literally.”_

“Fine,” August snaps, looking angrily perplexed, like he wasn’t expecting Rhys to agree to his demands so readily. “What’s the deal with you and Handsome Jack, huh?”

“Ohhhh boy,” Rhys sighs. “Where to start.”

“ _Great_ ,” Sasha says. “Now he’ll never shut up.”

Rhys throws a pebble at her, which she easily deflects with a flick of her hand.

“We, uh, we have _history,”_ Rhys starts.

“No shit, princess, could’ve figured that one out myself.” 

“Hey, am I the one telling the story here or - ?” August glares, then settles. Rhys exhales sharply, then nods. “Yeah. So. _History_. Long story short, I used to consult for Hyperion R &D. Fell in with Jack, thought everything was peachy for six, seven months, then it all blows up in my face.” He glances at August. “You know about S&S Munitions?”

“What, the guns company? They got bought out by Hyperion way back.”

“Yeah, well, ‘bought out’ is a nice way of putting it. Hostile takeover. Very, _very_ hostile. Thing is, my family used to run S &S. My parents built it up from scratch. This was seven years ago, of course, so Jack was what, a couple of years into being CEO of Hyperion? He was looking to consolidate power, take out the big fish.” Rhys looks down at his hands in his lap, picks absently at a hangnail. “We fell for it, straight into his lap. I was Head of S&S R&D, and he offered me the consulting position for Hyperion. Sure, the money was one thing, but the chance to direct Hyperion development policy? That was the golden ticket, and we didn’t even stop to ask why he was just handing them out.”

“I’ll be damned,” August whistles, looking reluctantly impressed. “S&S was good shit. Ma always said their guns were top-rate. Reliable, wouldn’t jam on you like the Torgue knock-offs.” 

Rhys can’t help but preen a little. “We had very strict quality control.” At the expectant looks from Fiona and Sasha, he pauses, then continues. “But, well. Consulting worked out great for a while, my parents were ecstatic Jack and I were -” he clears his throat, flushing, “- _working_ well together, there was all this talk about a Hyperion-S &S partnership.” He laughs bitterly. “So, _so_ stupid. As if Jack would want an equal partner - _competitor_ \- when he could be the top dog. Jumping to the end, I woke one day, went about doing regular R &D consults, and when I made it back home that night I found a bunch of Hyperion guards waiting. I struggle, get stabbed in the eye with a stun baton, next thing I know I’m being shoved on a shuttle to Pandora. They dump me in Skag Gully, give me a bottle of water, and head off. Ran into skags, got an arm chewed up, passed out in a cave near the Hyperion dump, built myself a new arm from my ECHOpad and scrap metal. After that I just wandered around for a while until Fiona and Sasha found me and patched me up. When I get to civilisation, the first news I hear when I get a decent connection going is that S&S is Hyperion property and my parents are dead.” 

Rhys glances at August. “That’s, you know, all there is to it. Mostly.”

“So, what, he left you alive because he wanted a backup fuck or something?” August asks, frowning.

“No, not that. That’d probably have been kinder, actually.” Rhys looks away. “He left me alive because he wanted me to know he won. That’s all it was to him. A game. And he was the goddamned winner.”

August falls silent, suddenly awkward. “Fucking sucks,” he says after a while, gruff.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Rhys sighs, then clears his throat. “But, yeah, well, story time’s over. Poor Rhys, boo hoo, tough break.” He looks to Fiona and Sasha, who meet him with twin expressions of horror and sadness. “Hey, hey,” he soothes. “It’s okay, it was ages ago, I’m fine now.”

Sasha sputters. “You never told us all that! I’m going to _skin_ that _bastard_ ,” she hisses. 

Rhys feels his eyebrows rise. He’d actually given them the scaled-down, censored version, gory and painful details cut out.

“Sure, okay,” he replies, wary of Sasha’s wrath. August just looks smug, like he’s had his point proven. Rhys resists the childish urge to stick his tongue out at him.

“Seriously, Rhys, what the hell, we had _no idea,”_ Fiona adds, aghast. 

“I’m sorry?” he offers, voice meek. “I mean, I _did_ tell you guys that Jack and I have some bad blood. And I did tell you about the S &S thing. _And_ that my parents were dead.” He shuts up at the simultaneous glares he receives from Fiona and Sasha.

Fiona exhales sharply, raising her eyes to the ceiling. “Okay, right. So. What now, then? We’ve got Jackass and Vallory on our asses, and we know they’re not going to just stop.”

Grateful that Fiona’s willing to let it go for now, Rhys beams at her, but Sasha shoots him a _look_ that he knows means this isn’t over. “We know Jack is after Project Titan, which is, uh, _me,_ but also the old S &S installations,” he explains. “He _can’t_ be allowed to get that S &S research. You think Hyperion is bad now? It’s nothing compared to what it’d be like if they got that research.” 

August looks disbelieving, but Rhys powers on. “He’s going to go after Project Titan using Gortys - the Gortys Project?” He’s met with blank stares. “It’s this robot AI that Atlas was working on to summon and hold the Vault of the Traveller. It didn’t work out so well for them, but Gortys has long-range Eridium sensors built-in, and it’s more powerful than anything Hyperion has, so he’ll be using her to trace the Eridium found in Project Titan facilities - which studied opened Vaults, which produce Eridium.”

“ _Her?”_ Sasha asks, single eyebrow raised.

Rhys refuses to feel embarrassed over his attachment to a tiny robot AI. “Gortys is this tiny spherical robot, okay, she’s adorable. You’ll love her.” He ignores Sasha’s dubious look. “But back to the plan. We need to destroy Project Titan, find Gortys, keep Vallory from murdering us, and keep Jack far, far away. That’s it. Things could be worse, I guess.” 

He’s met with silence.

“Yeaaaaah,” August says at length. “If by _worse_ you mean dead, dumbass. We are _one step up from being dead._ ” Sasha hurls a pebble at August and it connects with his head. There’s an _ow, goddamnit_ and furious glaring before things settle again.

“So,” Fiona asks, question aimed at Rhys, “I don’t suppose you know where all the Project Titan bases are?” He shakes his head, apologetic. “Right,” she mutters. “Because that would be too easy.”

“I’ve been to one,” he explains. “But it was something my mother headed up, so I wasn’t really involved in it, and I never got around to visiting all the others.”

Sasha perks up. “Yeah? What about that one?” 

“Wouldn’t work,” he sighs. “I accessed that as soon as I could to delete all the information about the project from S&S servers.” He shrugs. “I blew it up when I left.”

“So our best bet is Jack’s best bet? Using Gortys?” Fiona asks.

Rhys nods. “Pretty much.”

Sasha lets out a low whistle. “You don’t ask for much, do you? We just, oh, have to find the _most dangerous person on the planet_ and steal a robot out from under him, no big deal.”

August looks vaguely insulted. “Hey,” he adds. “My ma is more dangerous.”

Rhys side-eyes him, then looks back at Sasha. “Weeell, the first part shouldn’t be too difficult?” He gestures to himself. “I _think_ I can find Gortys using, my, you know,” he waves his fingers.

Fiona frowns. “Your weird mojo?” He sends her an affronted look, which she waves off. 

He nods. “Yeah. We figured that my abilities were _somehow_ Eridium-based, and Gortys has an inbuilt partial connection to it, which she used to summon the Vault of the Traveller. I’m fairly sure I can track her down with it. Probably. Except…” he trails off. “I can’t take us there directly.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” August questions, not looking too pleased.

Rhys grimaces. “The range of my abilities is linked to the store of Eridium I have in my system. A small chip? Yeah, I can get us around most of Pandora, maybe one-way to Helios. But I used that when shit went down with Vallory. I can’t open up a path to wherever it is Gortys is.”

“Wait, so we’re _stuck here?”_ August demands.

Rhys rolls his eyes. “ _No_. But I can only open up a path to where we were before, which means the safe house.”

“Eh, that’s not so bad,” Fiona says. “We need to get the caravan, anyway. If it’s looted though…” she trails off darkly. 

“ _Yes_ ,” Sasha jumps in. “No offence to your Deserter monster pal, but I’m sick of this place. Can we get moving or what?”

“Sure,” Rhys shrugs. “If everyone’s ready?” 

 

 

__________

 

 

The caravan isn’t looted. So, hey, small victories. The safe house has been trashed, though, most likely by Jack and his thugs. It’s not as if they lost anything of real value, but the thought of it still rankles, and it puts Rhys in a sour mood. 

He’d managed to track down what he thought to be Gortys’s signal to the middle of nowhere, near the Circle of Duty. It’s no guarantee that they’ll find Gortys and Jack there, especially since what he managed to sense kept _jumping_ weirdly, like it was being scrambled, but it’s not too far from the Dahl Headlands and the Hyperion base camp, so it’s not a bad bet.

It’s a seven hour drive to the Circle of Duty, and once they’re there he’ll need to refine the location further. It’s a mess of old abandoned facilities, so it could be in any of them. August has the wheel at the moment, which gives Sasha and Fiona plenty of time to grill him.

There isn’t much to tell, really. Rhys doesn’t want them worrying about him, so he pares down the facts and tries to leave out the part where he sleeps with Jack. Fiona and Sasha work it out, anyway, and they pull disgusted faces but don’t press him for details. This is why he loves them. They can see that he’s exhausted - the exertion of his abilities over the past few days still taking a toll on him - so they leave him to sleep after getting the (mostly) whole story out of him. 

When Rhys wakes, the caravan is empty. He can feel that they’re near the coordinates of Gortys’s location that he’d given Sasha. Standing with a groan, he stretches and works out the kinks in his back before glancing out the window. It’s night now, but it’s lit yellow from somewhere below his field of vision. He spots the three of them lying low on the edge of a cliff, looking down at where the light is coming from. 

Rhys crouches and slowly makes his way over to them, getting nods from Fiona and Sasha when he draws abreast. He looks down.

Wow.

Well, _shit_.

This is bad.

There are groups of Psychos roaring around on their souped-up vehicles, screaming and hollering and stabbing. Psychos are sloppy and careless when attacking, but even then, there’s no way in hell they can manage to take down what looks to be _at least_ thirty of them down below. 

“Sooooo,” Sasha says slowly. “Any ideas?”

Fiona’s on the binoculars, which Rhys wrestles away from her, earning a light cuff to the head. “There,” he says, spotting an access tunnel off the side, in the shadows. It’s guarded, but there are only two of them, so if they’re sneaky and quick it shouldn’t be much of a problem. “A maintenance tunnel. Leads down into the building.”

August grunts in agreement. Nodding, Fiona wrenches back control of the binoculars, sticking a tongue out at Rhys. He returns her insult with an unimpressed look. Sasha just rolls her eyes and begins plotting the best way down the cliff.

Ten minutes later, they’ve got two guards down and one maintenance hatch open. Sasha makes to descend the ladder first, but Rhys stops her, pointing to his ECHO eye and arm, clicking on the light. She shrugs, then gestures him ahead. 

Carefully, Rhys lowers himself into the tunnel, wary of the way the ladder is clearly rusted in most parts and not entirely structurally sound. Sasha enters after him, her descent made easier by the light from Rhys’s palm. They climb further down, then pause when they hear voices from above and neither Fiona nor August enter the tunnel after them.

Aaaaand of _course_ that’s when the maintenance hatch slams shut and won’t reopen. There’s a five-second pause, and then Sasha sighs. “ _Great_.”

With more confidence than he feels, Rhys resumes the climb down. “Nowhere else to go,” he reasons, and Sasha just sighs again.

“Remember when we’d pull nice, _easy_ jobs? No drama, no one out to kill us?” she muses. “I miss those. We should go back to those.”

“When all this is over, definitely,” he promises.

“I’m holding you to that,” she mutters. “Now we just have to climb down to get into a building where everyone wants to kill us so we can find our way up to Fiona and August, and where people _still_ want to kill us. _Hah._ ”

They reach the end of the maintenance tunnel, which leads to a massive room of a derelict…factory plant? He’s not entirely sure. They take out the guards, then step onto an elevator platform in the middle of the room. He pushes a button, and the platform begins to slowly rise.

“There you go,” Rhys says, smiling winningly. “Worst part’s over. We just need to get up there and find Fiona and angry-face.”

“You’ve jinxed it,” Sasha moans. “You know you have.”

“Whaaaaat,” he says. “Don’t be silly, Sash, you know jinxes aren’t -” 

Their platform breaches the opening in the ceiling, and they’re out in bright daylight. Eyes shielded from the sun, slowly adjusting, Rhys can gradually make out -

“I hate you,” Sasha mutters from behind him. “I hate you _so much.”_

A murder rally. 

They’re in the middle of a fucking _murder rally._

“Oh my _god,”_ he hears Sasha say. “Is that - ?”

Yup.

They’re in the middle of a fucking _murder rally,_ and Fiona and August are _taking part in it_.

God, what even is Rhys’s _life_.

 

 

__________

 

 

Three explosions, multiple casualties, one damaged voice synthesiser, and two cars barrelling towards them at top speed and _causing the ground to collapse_ later, Rhys, Fiona, Sasha, and August are stuck. Underground. In what looks to be a top-secret Atlas facility. About the Gortys Project. Which is most definitely _not here_.

Yes, these things just happen to him. He couldn’t even make this up if he tried.

“You know how I said things could be worse?” Rhys moans to the room at large. “I’ve changed my mind. This is the absolute worst day. This is hell.”

Fiona flicks him on the shoulder. “Stop being so dramatic, you drama queen.”

Sasha viciously hits him with a shiny new SMG she’s pilfered. “Stop. _Jinxing._ Things,” she hisses, and Rhys isn’t ashamed to say he’s maybe slightly terrified of Sasha, so he shuts up.

“Hey,” he hears August call from the far side of the room, and Rhys looks up. “Come take a look at this.” August points at the terminal he’s poking at.

Rhys wanders over to where he is. “Huh,” he wonders aloud. “There’s still power on this.” He activates his ECHO eye, scanning the console. “No good,” he says. “I could hack this, but the system is set to lock down and wipe itself if it senses any foul play. I’d need days to crack this properly.” 

Rhys looks around. The lab they’re standing in doesn’t look to be in too bad a shape, to be honest. It’s clearly one of Atlas’s super-duper-top-secret projects that even Jack hasn’t managed to unearth. It’s mostly untouched, save for dust. It’s like the employees just left at the end of a day and all failed to show up to work the next morning. Personal effects like photos and desk knick-knacks still litter the room.

“Guys?” he calls to Fiona and Sasha. “We need to look for an ID drive. It’ll be small, about this - ” he holds his thumb and forefinger apart, “- big? The staff here didn’t take much with them when they left, and ID drives get left behind at work all the time.”

Rhys shakes his head. The S&S folks use to do that. Terrible for security, but it made for convenience. 

“Like this?” Fiona responds, holding up a small silver rectangle. She squints at it. “Used to belong to some Nakayono? Nakayami? It’s pretty faded.”

Rhys frowns hard. “Nakayama?”

Fiona checks the drive again, then nods. “Yeah, that’s probably it.”

“That’s…too much of a coincidence,” he concedes, walking over to where Fiona is. She hands him the drive, and he holds it up to have a better look at it. “I knew a Nakayama. Hyperion scientist, _complete_ nut job. Jack cut him loose because he was becoming more of a problem than he was worth.” Rhys turns the drive over in his hands. “Atlas must’ve picked him up.”

Rhys uncaps the drive, and Sasha shoots him a worried look. “You sure this is a good idea?” 

“Eh, couldn’t hurt,” Rhys responds, shrugging. “He might have some useful info, and we need his ID to log into the system anyway.”

“If you’re sure,” she says, remaining unconvinced. 

“I’ll be fine,” he reassures, holding it up to his temple port. “What could go wrong?”

Rhys plugs the drive in, wincing at the grind as it slides in. He should really make sure to oil the -

He blacks out.

 

 

__________

 

 

Rhys comes to to worried voices and a hand on his forehead. 

“What’s that suppose to do,” he mumbles, blinking his eyes open, “feel the temperature of my consciousness?”

“Yeah,” Fiona says drily, removing her hand from where it is on his forehead. “He’s fine. A dumbass that takes unnecessary, _stupid_ risks, but fine.”

“Hey,” he protests. “I’ve got the ID, and there wasn’t anything on that drive but really, _really_ disturbing porn, so I take your point, but it’s all worked out -”

There’s a flicker of blue in the corner of his vision. Rhys frowns, shaking his head.

Sasha appears at his side, gruffly concerned. “You okay?” She offers a hand. He takes it, and she hauls him to his feet. 

“Yeah,” he mutters, shaking his head again, then turns to look at her. “Like I said, I’m -”

Rhys’s gaze meet eyes that _definitely_ don’t belong to Sasha. Because, for one, Sasha isn’t a blue, glowing, holographic projection. And second? Sasha isn’t a blue, glowing, holographic projection of _Handsome Jack._

Wordless, Rhys backs away as the projection stalks up to him, gleeful, wicked grin in place. 

“Oh,” holographic Jack says, viciously pleased. “This is _great.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooooo boy, now we're getting somewhere.
> 
> *rubs hands together in glee*


	8. what makes a good man

When Rhys was five, they went on a family trip to Promethea. He doesn’t remember that much about it, really, except that it’d been hot, sunny, and he hadn’t liked the beach all that much, the blue sand weird and grainy against his feet, sticking between his toes. 

He remembers the flower dome, though, the, uh - what was it called again? 

Oh, yeah, the Nature Preserve. It’d been one of Promethea’s biggest attractions, filled with flowers and plants of every imaginable colour and species from every galaxy and world. He’d loved that. His dad had been an avid botanist, and they’d begged off from the beach and left his mum suntanning away to go there.

Rhys hadn’t been all that impressed at first, honestly, because Eden-6 was no slouch in the flora and fauna department, so a bunch of different-coloured and oddly-shaped greens wasn’t all that awe-inspiring to a bored five-year-old. 

But he’d been five, and at five had developed a fairly morbid fascination with death and deadly things, so when their tour guide took them past the Poison Garden, he’d wheedled and pleaded and pretty much outright begged to be allowed to go in there.

His dad had been reluctant, but then he’d probably figured that his son was exposed to deadly firearms on an almost daily basis, so plants were maybe less dangerous, and he ended up relenting. 

So the first thing Rhys sees when the tour guide hesitantly takes them in is the most _beautiful_ flower he’s ever laid eyes on. It’s the deepest red, curled like a ball with petals unfurling around it, each progressively richer in colour. By the time the guide manages to tell them that it’s also the _most poisonous_ one around, he’s already plucked one and is slumped over on the floor, foaming at the mouth.

Medics arrive, administer the antidote, his dad yells for a bit then hugs him, he cries, his mum is mad, usual stuff.

Normal people would take it as a lesson learnt. _Normal_ people would back the fuck away and vow to never play with pretty flowers that can kill you with a touch ever again.

Yeah. So.

Well. 

Rhys sneaks back into the Poison Garden the next day, determined to best the flower. He can’t really remember the logic behind his reasoning, it had something to do with wanting the flower to keep and also wanting to show it who was boss? It’s weird, he was five, don’t judge.

Anyway, so. He has gloves on this time, he’s being smart about this.

Except, you know, maybe he should have taken the hint when the guide mentioned it was the _most poisonous flower in the fucking galaxies,_ because obviously the glove is no help, so he collapses again and does an excellent imitation of a skag foaming at the mouth. 

Again.

 

 

 

Basically, the point is: Rhys is a fucking dumbass who doesn’t know when to quit things that are terrible, no good, and very bad for him.

You get where this is going?

Okay, don’t say it. 

He knows, you know, let’s not make things weird by saying it.

 

 

__________

 

 

 

“Hey, Rhysie, why the gaping face, huh? Haven’t seen me in _that_ long?” Jack glances around the room, interest clear in the lines of his (not) body. 

“Found yourself a little Atlas place, niiiiiiice.” He saunters up a flight of stairs hugging a wall, heading for the upper floor. “Wow, seriously, it’s like they’re just _begging_ us to take this stuff. You think Legal’s going to be all up our shit if we, you know - ” he waves his hands at the tech around them, “- _borrow_ this? Got some cool plating on the weapons here we can use.”

Dumbly, Rhys stares after him. 

“I’ve uh, I’ll go check out upstairs, I just need a breather,” he mumbles to the group, ignoring their protests to trail, dumbfounded, after the projection.

“Okay, wow, what is _up_ with you, have you really missed ol’ Jack that much? It’s only been a week, cupcake, really.”He gives Rhys a slow once-over, pausing at the Hyperion logo stitched into the breast of his borrowed sweater. 

“That,” he says, pointing at the logo, eyes focused on Rhys and darkening with intent, “is mine.” He nods once. “Looks good on you.” Jack smiles slyly, then continues in his examination of the room.

A _week_. 

God.

God _damnit._ Jack had fired Nakayama a couple of months before the S&S takeover. Before that, Rhys’d been shuttling behind Helios and The Orbital, but he’d kept his main residence on Helios. The only time he’d been back on The Orbital for a week-long stretch was when Irving in R&D blew up that lab, and Rhys needed to clean house. 

Jack’d been caught up in some project of Nakayama’s before he let him go, and he’d never let Rhys in on what they’d been doing. Jack’d just disappear for a few hours to the top-secret projects division each day. 

Rhys doesn’t know what the holographic copy’s purpose is, but it must have been pretty damned important for it to have caught Jack’s attention the way it did. He’s clearly a very accurate copy, at the very least, if entirely blue. Rhys isn’t sure how much this copy knows, but he obviously knows who he is, which, given what went down, probably isn’t the best thing.

And now he’s in his _head._ Oh, _god._

_Fuck_ this shit, okay, really, jeez. _Jeez._

“Yeah, fine, you want to keep up the silent treatment today, that’s great, but hey, listen up,” Jack calls, studying the Atlas lab with a critical eye. “First thing we need to do is lock this place down. Not enough to attract bandits, but just enough to keep out the gawkers.” He peers down the rail. “Yeah, then we’re going to need a dropship to get all this tech out of here.”

Lock this place down? _Dropship?_

“No. _No_. This is impossible. You’re not _real_.”

Jack pauses in his inspection, turning fully to face him, expression incredulous. “Ah, Rhysie, seriously, you take a blow to the head or what? I’m ‘ _not real’?_ What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” He stalks towards him.

Backing up, Rhys feels the small of his back hit the rail. 

“Uh, Rhys?” he hears Fiona calls from below. “Are you…alright?”

“Yeah!” he hastily responds, wincing when he hears his voice crack at the end. “I’m, you know, just checking out the top level and clearing my head. I’ll be down soon.”

Holographic Jack’s got him boxed in now, hands on either side of Rhys on the rail, face leaning in close, eyes hard. “Oh?” he says. “And who are _they?”_ he gestures towards the group below. “Care to introduce me to your friends, kitten?”

Rhys clears his throat, taking a couple of deep breaths to calm his racing pulse. “You’re not _real,”_ he says again, emphatic. “You’re a _holographic copy_ of Jack. A failed project of Nakayama’s.” He shakes his head in an attempt to get a grip on the situation. “It’s been a long time, Jack. Everything’s changed.”

Jack laughs derisively. “What are you _talking_ about, you’re starting to sound like you’ve lost your marbles, pumpkin.” A blue, glowing hand comes up to cup Rhys’s chin, then passes clean through.

Rhys yelps. Shut up, he can’t help it. The sight of a hand passing through your head is pretty startling, alright?

“Oh, shut up,” Jack snaps, clearly at a loss and not liking it one bit. “Are you screaming because you’re in pain, or are you just freaking out because this is really weird?” He swipes a hand at Rhys again, and it passes through him. “Because this. This is weird. Really weird.” His tone is bewildered now, tinged with a hint of panic.

Jack keeps grabbing for Rhys, hand disappearing in and out of his body. “Will you _please_ stop doing that?” Rhys grits out from behind clenched teeth.

“This is just…it doesn’t make any _sense,”_ Jack wonders.

Rhys dodges the hand and comes up for him again. 

“Stand still, damn it,” Jack growls, reaching for Rhys. 

“Stop _doing_ that,” Rhys yells, resolve and patience fraying. He can hear Fiona and Sasha’s worried murmurs from the floor below. Taking a calming breath, he shuts his eyes briefly, then opens them. “It’s like I told you, okay? Jack. Jack is alive. _Real._ You’re not him. You’re a copy made by Nakayama. A _digital_ copy.”

Jack shakes his head, disbelieving, then starts to pace. “No, no, no, no, no. That’s impossible. I - I can’t be. There’s only one of me. No. No. That’s _stupid_. No way. There’s only one Handsome Jack, and that’s _me_.”

Rhys runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “Look, I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry? That sucks?”

“You don’t _get it!”_ Jack spits, then visibly reigns himself in. “No. No. There’s only one hero in any good story. And that’s me. _Me._ This doesn’t make any sense. I’m - _I’m_ _Handsome Jack,_ not some _bullshit_ digital knock-off. Not happening. _Not_ happening.”

Jack eyes Rhys, eyes almost manic. “Hey, c’mere, cupcake, just let me try this one more time.” He makes grabby hands for Rhys’s throat. “Just one more time. Come _here._ ”

“What?” Rhys asks, eyeing his hands with distrust. “No!”

“I’ve worked it out, I’ve just got to be quicker about it, that’s what it is.”

“ _Jeez,”_ Rhys says, exhaling sharply through his nose. “Fuck this. Get a _grip,_ ” he snaps. “You’re a digital copy, deal with it. You’ve got all the memories, right?” He waves a hand in Jack’s direction. “You dealt with Nakayama. Work it out, you’re smart enough. I’m done here.” He throws his hands up and starts back down the stairs.

He’s furious. As if it isn’t enough that he has Jack on his tail, he now has his digital clone _in his head?_ Any panic he might have felt has been burnt off by the heat of his anger. 

He’s going to get into the fucking Atlas system, figure out what’s in the facility, grab that, yank Jack out of his head, and get the hell out of here.

Simple.

 

 

___________

 

 

“Done being crazy?” August demands, clearly impatient.

“Hey, lay off him,” Sasha warns. She turns to Rhys. “You _sure_ you’re okay?” 

Fiona comes up to him, eyes searching. “You had us really worried for a bit.”

“I’m fine, seriously. The drive didn’t sync well, but I’ve got it under control now.” Rhys reassures. Holographic Jack hasn’t made a reappearance yet. Probably sulking somewhere upstairs. 

He rubs his hands together, eyeing the console in front of him. “I can do this. Let’s crack this bad boy open.”

Calling up his palm computer, he feeds Nakayama’s ID into the terminal, which blinks green after a long second. “Theeeere we go,” he mutters, pulling up the system’s information to his palm. There’s a fuckton of files to sift through, most of it useless research reports. He keeps digging, pumping his fist when he hits a solid firewall and a request for higher security clearance. “Yes, jackpot.” 

The code’s pretty good, but it lacks finesse, so a couple of tweaks and a hacked backdoor later, Rhys is in. He’s vaguely aware of Fiona hovering over his shoulder to peer at what he’s doing. Sasha and August are milling about the room poking at things, slightly bored. 

“Hey,” Fiona interrupts, pointing at a file on the screen. “That, look.” It’s labelled ‘Repository 01 - The Archivist’. 

“Huh, okay,” Rhys says, unsure what Fiona sees in the file label that he doesn’t, but trusting her gut instinct all the same. He executes a command to open it, and is met with a blinking red ‘ERR-OPEN’ message. He sends several more commands at it to the same effect. Running a quick check on the other files, it’s clear that this is the only one with that problem.

Rhys is so engrossed with trying to crack the file that he barely notices Fiona leave his side.

“Uh, Rhys?” she calls.

“What?” he replies, slightly annoyed at his hacking being interfered with.

“You _really_ need to see this.”

Huffing in irritation, he pushes away from the terminal, palm computer still whirring as he walks over to her at the centre of the lab.

“ _Look,”_ she insists. 

Rhys finally tears himself away from the screen, head coming up. 

It’s.

_Wow_.

“Yeah,” she says, voice hushed in awe, as they all look on, transfixed. “I think that’s The Archivist.”

There’s a projection of a planet - Pandora, he identifies - hovering above them, rotating slowly. He can make out six blinking points across the planet’s surface - one, he realises with a start, over where they are. The projection shimmers blue, glowing faintly.

Rhys reaches up to interact with it, delicately spinning the projection with a brush of his finger.

“How did you get this going?” he hears Fiona ask Sasha.

From the corner of his eye, he sees Sasha shrug sheepishly. “We pushed a red button.” Craning his neck, he catches sight of a red button, recessed now, on the wall behind them. 

“And you say _I_ take risks,” he jokes, ignoring the way Sasha scrunches up her face at him. “I’m guessing this was an open programme left running, so we couldn’t call it up on the terminal.” 

Turning back to the projection, he looks down briefly to shut his palm computer off to have more hands to work with. 

He brings his mechanical hand up to enhance the projection, stepping back in shock as the projection collapses into a bright point of light that shoots for his arm and winks out.

“What the -” he registers August saying, before a staggering _rush_ of information surges through him. His hands come up to cradle his head as he cries out at the intensity of it.

Rhys can hear worried shouts in the background as he drops to his knees, overwhelmed by the inflow of data to his system. He holds a hand out, struggling to find words. “I’m okay,” he manages to choke out, eyes screwed shut. 

It takes a long moment for the flood to abate, the waters of information subsiding and eddying into the corners of his mind. Breathing harshly, he manages to wobble back on his feet. 

Sasha comes up to support him, taking some of his weight. 

“What was _that_ about?” August asks, alarmed. 

Rhys focuses on breathing, on steadying himself. When he can, he cracks open his eyes.

“That’s not the Archivist,” he says, voice hoarse. “The Archivist, it’s split into, into -” he sifts through the data. “ - five other parts, scattered around Pandora.”

“It’s a Vault?” Sasha asks, interest caught. 

“No, but yes.” He takes his weight off Sasha’s shoulders. “It’s - it’s - ” he struggles to define it, the information in his mind overwhelming. “Vaults are stores of Eridian tech, right? Like weapons caches,” he explains, and he’s met with nods all round. “The Archivist - it’s this, this store of Eridian _knowledge._ A database of Eridian information.”

“So what just happened there?” August questions. “You downloaded one part of it to your brain?”

Rhys shakes his head. “That’s not it, this is just the - the _key_ to it, you know?” 

He paces the room. “This changes _everything,_ ” he muses aloud. He can feel the excitement building, low and fast in his gut. “All our tech, our weapons, everything? Based off old Eridian tech that Atlas dug up; they’re the ones who kicked off the whole race for Eridian shit. _Everything’s_ reverse-engineered from these weapons and technology that we never fully understood.”

He can see understanding dawn in Fiona’s gaze. “Like harnessing fire without understanding it,” she says. 

“Right, exactly,” he exclaims, barrelling on. “The Archivist, the knowledge in there? Will change _everything_ about the way we understand our tech, weapons. Fuck, we wouldn’t even _need_ Vaults, because with this we can manufacture and build shit that’s as good or even _better_ than that, because now we’d understand it and we’d _know how to_.”

Sasha whistles, glint in her eyes. “All I know is that it sounds like a _whole_ lot of credits.”

Rhys points at her, smile wicked. “ _Exactly.”_

“Okay, okay,” Fiona hustles. “So this Archivist, it’s like, a physical room? Like a Vault? Can we get in?”

He parses the data in his head. “Sort of,” he says slowly. “It’s one location, only accessible by combining the data from the five Repositories. The information merges somehow, to - ” he frowns, “ - to open up a way to the Archivist?”

“These bozos haven’t cracked it?” Fiona asks, glancing at the staff desks around the lab. 

“I don’t think so,” he answers. “I’m cross-referencing the information here to the ones on their files. It seems like they didn’t get a lot of the information from the data-key…” he flicks through the downloaded research notes on his palm computer. “Something about not being able to understand the language or code?” 

Frowning, he flips the screen over so Fiona can see an excerpt of the data-key language. “I don’t get it,” he says. “It’s in English.” 

He’s met with incredulous looks.

“Rhys,” Sasha says slowly, tone cautious, “it’s really not.”

“Wait,” he says, bewildered. “You guys can’t read it?”

“It’s not in English, Rhys, it’s just weird symbols and lines,” Fiona says, eyeing him, equal parts concerned and curious.

“Hey,” August calls, brandishing a clipboard. “I’ve got something here.” 

“What is it?” Fiona asks.

Clearing his throat, August reads from the clipboard, voice rough. “Research indicates that the language, far from being a cipher as initially assumed, is instead native Eridian. While little progress has been made on deciphering it, Dr. Lawson has found references in myth and folklore that a Titan, a unique Eridium-wielding individual, may be the key to unlocking the Archivist and its secrets. Dr. Mathers, on the other hand, proposed that Sirens, instead, were crucial to the endeavour, but I am inclined to dismiss both as fanciful notions. Existing Sirens under Atlas surveillance show no predisposed abilities of the kind, and Titans, if one exists, have not surfaced for decades.”

He’s met with silence, Fiona and Sasha sputtering, everyone disbelieving.

Rhys is shaking his head, dubious.

There’s a flicker of blue, and Jack materialises next to him, one incorporeal arm slung around his shoulder.

“Oh, Rhysie,” he grins, calculating and sharp. “You special, _special_ snowflake.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, another chapter I'm not too happy with. I'll probably do a clean-up of this at some point, but right now I just feel guilty for not updating as quickly as I used to.
> 
> Sorry about the length, folks, it's been a hectic week of papers and projects. ):


	9. i know where you can hide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM ALIVE, AND THIS FIC IS NOT DEAD, I PROMISE.
> 
> The past couple of months have been crazy, and a whole bunch of shit came up that really threw a spanner into the works, hence the complete lack of updates. SORRY! 
> 
> I can't promise updates will be super frequent for the next four months or so - moving to a different continent does that. Also the lack of time, so there's that.

“You never told me you hated being away from The Orbital.”

It’s a cold night out. There’s desert for miles, stars spanning the sky as far as the eye can see, and crowning it all, the shadow of Helios. Below them, the caravan whirs along the Pandoran wasteland, making good time.

They’re alone. Rhys doesn’t want to do this, doesn’t want to _deal_ with this on top of everything that’s going on, but it seems this projection of Jack isn’t content to let dead bodies lie.

“That’s because I never did,” he says. “Sure, I didn’t _like_ being away all the time, but it’s not like Helios was - was -” he struggles for the right words, runs an agitated hand through his hair, then sighs. “It’s not like it was an absolute shitshow, you know?”

The look Jack pins on him is assessing, weighing. He’s heard too much, seen too much. Rhys isn’t sure how he’s going to deal with him when it comes down to it.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it,” Jack says after a moment of evaluation, and it’s not even really a question. “What’s it been - seven months? Eight? A year?” Jack jerks his chin at Rhys’s mechanical arm. “All upgraded hardware, but you aren’t unfamiliar with it, which means you’re past the initial syncing, so that’s at least six months.”

“Can’t we just leave it at ‘a _long_ while’?” Rhys demands, turning away from Jack to stare, unseeing, at the expanse of Pandoran sand.

He looks down to see a blue hand pass through his chin, as if Jack made to tilt it to face him, and hears the frustrated huff of his breath.

“Do you think I’m _happy_ with this, cupcake, _do you_?” Jack snaps. “The last thing I remember was you heading back for the week, and now -” he waves a hand at him, a vague noise of frustration escaping. “Now you’ve got a mechanical arm and ECHO eye and you’re a fucking _Titan,_ the fucking _key_ to that Atlas Vault?”

Rhys grinds his teeth together, rounding on Jack. “Seven years, okay, _seven goddamned years._ There. You _happy_ now? What, do you want me to throw my arms around you and squeal over how great I’m _sure_ it must be to see you? Huh? You want me to fall at your feet and _simper_ in adoration?” He exhales sharply. “Because with you, Jack…” he trails off, pursing his lips together. “I’ve given enough.”

It’s not often that Rhys can say he’s managed to get Jack so completely wrong-footed. Jack’s bewildered and trying not to let it show, and nothing would please Rhys more if this whole ordeal didn’t hurt so much.

Rhys shrugs and turns away, rolling his shoulders, trying to work some of the tension off.He lowers himself down onto the roof of the caravan, sitting and sprawling his legs out.

They’re quiet for a long time. Seconds pass, then minutes, then a silent, lingering hour.

Finally, Jack speaks. “What did I do?”

Silent, Rhys slowly shakes his head.

Jack doesn’t repeat the question, and when Rhys turns, he’s gone.

 

__________

 

It takes them the better part of a night and day to reach the outskirts of the Dahl Headlands, stopping once to refuel at one of Scooter’s Catch-a-Ride stations. They’re all tired, grumpy, and sick of talk of Vaults and Eridium.

It’s begrudgingly agreed on that they need to get Gortys out from under Jack before they do anything else.

Sasha’s raring to go after the Archivist data-keys, but she’d seen the logic in going after Gortys first. Without Gortys, Jack has no means of tracking down Project Titan installations, and they don’t have to worry about beating him to it to destroy the facilities. They can focus on getting to the Archivist.

Still, it’s far easier said than done, and they barely have a hint of a plan to work with.

Fiona kills the caravan engine a couple of miles from the Hyperion base camp, by a rocky outcropping.

Rhys lifts one of her spare hats that he’d used to shield his eyes during his nap off his face, rising on an elbow to yawn blearily.

“What now?” Sasha asks, stretching from her slump on a neighbouring chair. “I’d love to wring Jackass’s neck, but we _really_ don’t have the firepower to go charging in.” She eyes her SMG, rueful.

Fiona has her arms crossed, fingers tapping against her elbow, expression thoughtful. “ _Well,_ ” she draws out, eyeing August, “Jack knows how the three of us -” she gestures at Rhys, Sasha, and herself, “- look, so we obviously can’t sneak in.” She points at August. “You, though. We could get you in.”

Rhys sputters, incredulous. “ _No_ way that would work. He looks nothing like a Hyperion grunt. That nose ring? That beard? They’ll take one look at him and know he’s a Pandoran bum.” He glances at August. “No offence.”

August performs an odd combination of glaring and shrugging. “Whatever.”

“Yeah, okay,” Fiona acquiesces, her gaze considering. She tilts her head to the side, deep in thought.

“ _Right_ ,” she says, emphatically having reached a conclusion. “Right. This is going to sound _nuts,_ I know, but just hear me out.”

Rhys nods. Fiona’s the expert on cons and pulling fast ones, so it’s not like he’s going to distrust her plan on this.

She waves a hand at him. “What about you?”

It takes him a long minute to get that she’s saying _he_ should sneak into the base camp. He laughs, looks at her, then laughs again.

Rhys straightens. “No, wait, you’re being serious. You _really_ think Jack’s going to just let me _waltz_ in and out of the camp after what happened.”

She shoots him an unimpressed look. “We already know he’s not going risk killing you. You’re the only one he won’t shoot on sight, so that’s your way in. Once you’re in, all we have to do is figure out how to get you back out.”

“ _All_ you have to do?” Rhys parrots, disbelieving. “Gee, Fi, when you put it that way, I can almost forget about the couple hundred guards hanging around the camp waiting to _shoot_ people like us. And there’s no way I could contact you from inside. Not this time round. He’d have me under lock and key.”

Fiona rolls her eyes. “Fine, so the plan needs some work.” She flaps a hand at the three of them. “It’s still more of a plan than I see anyone coming up with. We can work out the fine print later.”

Rhys jolts when August speaks up. “It’s not the _worst_ plan in the world. It’s pretty crap, I’m not gonna lie, but that Hyperion shithole is the one place you’re probably safe from my Ma.” He shrugs at the look Sasha shoots him, and then falls back into grumpy silence and glaring.

“I don’t know,” Sasha finally joins in. “I don’t like it. There’re too many variables. Too many things could go wrong.” She compulsively fingers the trigger of her SMG, a classic tell that she’s nervous and not liking it one bit. “What if Jack moves Rhys? What if Rhys can’t get to Gortys? He’s not Jackass for no reason. He could torture Rhys, get what he wants, then kill him.”

Rhys is already shaking his head before she can finish. “Jack wouldn’t do that,” he says, and is bitterly surprised that his tone comes out so defensive. “You know that. He kills people because he can, because they’re annoyances. It’s like swatting flies, right? But he doesn’t rip off the wings for fun.”

He picks at a hangnail. “Sure, he might get some guards to rough me up a bit, make a show of throwing me in a cell, spend a couple of hours taunting me. He’s much more likely to try to come after you as leverage than he is to use physical violence to get me to talk, not when he knows the threat of killing me won’t work.”

Rhys looks up and catches the subtle touch of a smile on Fiona’s lips and knows they’ve all been played. He huffs a laugh under his breath, and tilts an imaginary hat at her. She accepts the compliment with a bow and a hand flourish.

“Our best bet would be to drop you off a couple of miles from the camp, have their guards pick you up.”

Even as Fiona says it, a dozen objections spring to Rhys’s mind. “That wouldn’t work, it’s too obv - ” He pauses, reconsiders, and then realisation dawns. _This_ is why Fiona plans and runs their cons. “There’s _no way_ we can do this without it being obvious. However we hack this, Jack’s going to know something’s up, but he can’t kill me. So, yeah, it’ll get his guard up, but any other way would, so we might as well play this up, keep him guessing.”

Fiona nods, pleased. “It’ll be obvious from the start that you’re after Gortys. But Jack’s cocky, and he’ll want to see what you’re going to do about it. He’s going to be panting after your Titan voodoo too, so you _could_ use that as _some_ leverage?”

Rhys scratches at his chin. “Yeah. With Jack, though, it’s best to make stuff up on the fly. He’s unpredictable.”

August cracks his neck, stretching, clearly bored with the conversation. He yawns. “You going to get going, or we gonna sit around here talking forever, or what?”

Rhys stands, working out the pins and needles in his legs. “Yeah, we’re going.”

 

__________

 

Turns out Hyperion guards carry a grudge, especially if you shot two of their guard mates before. Being tackled by a couple of guards in full armour and then getting beaten around a bit? Really fucking hurts.

Grunts 1 and 2 haul him into camp, more or less (who is Rhys kidding, it’s definitely _more_ ) dragging him behind them. Those bruises aren’t going anywhere for a while.

They radio ahead to let whoever it is know that they’ve got one of ‘the fugitives’ with them. Rhys has to resist rolling his eyes. The radio squawks back instructions to take him to the conference building, where Jack apparently is, so they troop him off to a low, squat prefab building in the middle of the compound.

There’s Jack, of course, looking vague and inscrutable, unspeaking as they march him in. There’s a new bandage on his forearm and scrapes on his temple. The bunch of Hyperion lackeys Jack’d been talking to are watching with avid interest, eyes alight with thirst for gossip.

The silence is unsettling. Jack jerks his chin towards the door, and the guards haul Rhys back outside, this time with Jack setting the course, striding ahead.

The apprehension grows as they lead him away from the staff housing sector and towards a familiar building.

“What,” Rhys asks. “Worried I might terrorise the little people?”

Jack snorts, dismissing the guards with a careless wave of his hand. He pushes the ornate _HJ_ doors to his residence open, nudging him in. The doors _swoosh_ shut behind them, the entrance foyer dim and cool.

From the corner of his eye, Rhys can make out a flash of blue, glowing in the dark. He turns his head slightly, eyeing holo Jack, who looks around intently, studying the painting of himself in the entrance arch. “Nice digs,” holographic Jack says, his grin razor-sharp and blue.

“Well,” _real_ Jack says, finally acknowledging Rhys properly. The low lighting glints off the hinges of his mask, the planes of his face thrown into harsh, unforgiving relief. He smirks. “It’s just you and me now.”

Eyes darting between the two Jacks, Rhys swallows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is shorter than my usual chapters and hasn't really added any crucial points to the plot, I'm sorry. ): I really wanted to just get this out to let people know this story was still going (and it is, I promise). 
> 
> I swear I'm going to finish this fic even if it kills me, but it'll take time. So, you know, pull up a seat and grab a cup of tea.
> 
> Updates *will* be slow for the next few months, but they *will* be coming. Turns out listening to To The Top by Twin Shadow is great Rhack inspiration. /shrugs
> 
> As always, comments are much loved and pretty much my lifeblood.


	10. interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have some adorable and kickass Carvers. They make me happy.  
> You know what sucks? Moving. Moving and visa shit. /end rant
> 
> Enjoy!

_Seven years, five months ago_

 

The Conservatory on The Orbital isn’t for public use. S&S employees all talk about how lush it is inside, all deep greens and abundant fauna, the faint fragrance of surrounding flora hanging heavy and ambrosial in the air.

None of them have even _been_ in it, of course, but no one’s going to tell you that. It’s both the best and worst kept secret on the station - everyone knows _where_ it is, no one actually knows what’s _in_ it.

It’s for the Carvers’ exclusive use. Some employees will tell you it’s really S&S’s top-secret experimental lab, the one with things so horrific and unsavoury no one can ever know. Others will claim it’s where they keep the dead bodies of their enemies, some sort of grotesque trophy room with corpses kept in frozen stasis.

All rumours Sarah Carver does her best to fuel, obviously. It’s good for their reputation that people fear them, and a little mystique never hurt anyone.

The reality of it is much less outlandish and far more benign.

When Sarah Miller, daughter of a small-town, independent gunsmith from Aquator first met Saul Carver, he’d been majoring in Botany in the University of the Edens, Hunter’s Gore. She’d been majoring in Engineering and minoring in Product Design, and when they got married, he put his dreams of revolutionising botanical science on hold to let her pursue hers.

Sarah never forgot that. So when S&S made it big and they had to move their base of operations to The Orbital, off planet-side and away from the fertile land and plants Saul loved so much, she ordered the Conservatory built just for him.

 

 

 

It’s where Rhys finds his mother having tea one afternoon, after he’d received an emergency call from site tech about one of the labs being blown up and had spent four hours putting out various literal and metaphorical fires. He’s exhausted and smells way more like smoke than he’d like. 

She’s sitting alone, in the central courtyard of the Conservatory, wrought-iron chair tucked under the shade of a palmy frond. Teacup in one hand and hardback book in the other, the shotgun sitting next to her on the table is entirely at odds with everything else in this little tableau.

Rhys creeps round the back of the main trellis, keeping in the shadows and skirting the edge of her vision. Just as he’s about to leap out from behind one of dad’s prized rosebushes, she single-handedly levels the shotgun at his hiding spot, eyes still skimming the page of the book she’s reading.

“Rhys, dear, you’re twenty-one years old,” she says, and it would be chastising but he knows she’s really wryly amused.

He shakes his head, standing. “It’s _freaky_ how you always do that,” he complains, brushing stray leaves from his jacket.

“It’s _sad_ how you’ve never once managed to catch me by surprise,” Sarah snarks back, and Rhys rolls his eyes, bending to kiss her cheek.

“Hey, mum,” he greets, and she pats his cheek fondly, giving him a critical once-over as she does so.

“Well, you’re still in one piece, so I assume Jack’s been playing nice?” she asks, threat clear in her tone, a single, perfectly-shaped brow raised.

“Hmm?” Rhys steals a sandwich from the tray on the table, distracted. “Oh, yeah, sure. I’ve got my own place and lab on Helios and everything, it’s pretty sweet.”

“I still don’t see why you had to move all the way there just to _consult,_ ” Sarah grumbles, setting her book aside and tucking it under the shotgun still on the table. “Helios is so far away.”

Rhys sighs, used to his mother’s brand of parental guilt. “It’s only half a day away, mum. And you know I need to be there to see things in person.”

“Half a day,” Sarah snorts contemptuously. “You mean thirteen hours. Bah. If Irving down in R&D hadn’t blown himself up and taken the whole lab with him, you wouldn’t even be here, is this how you repay your father and I for raising you?”

It’s amazing how much like a child his mother can make him feel. He’d be more impressed at her frankly unholy guilt-tripping powers if they weren’t directed at him all the time.

“Nooooo,” Rhys says, “I repay you and dad by being intelligent and badass and making you _fifty million credits_ consulting for Hyperion.”

His mother narrows her eyes at him, but he can tell she’s pacified for the time being.

“Fine,” she reluctantly concedes, plucking a sandwich from the tray and nibbling at it, eyes sharp on him. “Tell me about work.”

Rhys settles into the chair across from her. “It’s great, we just finished rolling out blueprints for a new pistol. It’s down with the boys at Prototype and Testing now, but production’s going to start in a couple of weeks. It’s no Gemini, but it’s a good gun.”

Sarah nods. “What about that fiasco with Torgue?”

“You heard about that?” His mother gives him a _look_. Yeah, okay, he should’ve known his mum pretty much has fingers in every pie in the business.

“It wasn’t anything _big-_ big,” he explains. “Some relatively new hire - Levine, Laven, something - ended up being a Torgue spy, shot a few people and made away with the schematics for the new mechanical prosthetic arm.”

“The same one you were looking into?” There’s concern in her tone, overshadowed by anger on his behalf.

“Well, not exactly ‘looking into’, more like ‘pioneered and wrote about and defended in my thesis’, so, yeah, that kind of sucks.”

“So it _is_ big.”

Rhys shrugs. It’d been a bummer, sure, but the mechanical prosthetic was far from being good enough to go public, and there aren’t any blueprints of his that he can’t replicate from memory.

“You want me to send someone to Torgue to check things out?” At Rhys’s pointed glare, Sarah backs down, hands raised in placation. “Fine, fine, you’re a big boy, you handle your own corporate espionage.”

She looks him over, a slow and considering sweep of him. She sighs wistfully, smiles, and then lightly pats his knee. “Your dad and I are really proud of you, yeah?”

Rhys squirms under the full weight of his mother’s maternal affection. “Yeah, I know.”

Turning back to the table, Sarah picks up the teapot to refill her now-empty cup. “How’s Jack?”

“Oh, he’s, you know, good.” Rhys rubs the back of his neck.

Sarah Carver is not a stupid or unobservant woman, and she knows her son as well as she knows guns. Probably even better, but then again, she does know guns _really_ well.

She raises her eyebrows. “ _Really,”_ she says, tone sly, and Rhys flushes red. “You know,” she continues, “I wouldn’t have called that, but looking back, I should’ve seen it coming.”

Rhys is pretty much prepared to pick up a teaspoon and start digging himself a nice hole in the ground. Or _anywhere else_ away from his mother.

“I’m _really_ not having this conversation with you,” he says, stuffing one of the sandwiches into his mouth. He’s not being reticent and petulant, that would be childish and unbefitting of a responsible adult like him.

His mother says nothing, merely reaching across the table to pick up her ECHO comm, idly poking away at it for a few moments before setting it back down, the familiar ring of a call being placed coming tinny through the speakers.

The call’s picked up, and the projection screen flickers on to his dad on the other end, clad in a soot-covered lab coat, eyebrows slightly singed.

Rhys narrows his eyes at his mother. “You fight dirty,” he mouths at her, and she beams innocently back at him over the screen.

“Saul, honey, look who’s visiting,” she calls, and Rhys can hear clanging and muffled sounds of explosions in the background.

Rhys waves. “Hey, pops, what’s burning?”

“Rhys! Good to have you back, your mother and I were beginning to think you’d forgotten where The Orbital was.” Saul Carver waves a dismissive hand at the scene behind him. “Ignore the chaos, we’re putting together prototypes for the new frag grenade. One of the engineers slipped, pulled out a pin, and, well, at least we know the grenades do what we want them to.” He shrugs. “Good thing we pay the cleaning crews well. You know, these frag grenades, I was talking to Robinson, he thinks if we switch up the -”

Sarah clears her throat pointedly, and Saul cuts himself off mid ramble, expression abashed. “Sorry, hon, you know how I get with prototypes. Anyway!” He turns to yell something indecipherable at a lackey out of view of the ECHO comm, before returning to shift his attention to Rhys. “So, son, how’s the Hyperion Jackass doing?”

Sarah rolls her eyes. “Ignore your father,” she directs at Rhys, “He’s still sore at the fact that Jack is nicer to me.”

“Nice? _Nice?”_ his dad squawks. “He said that if you were twenty years younger he’d marry you in a heartbeat! He said that! _In front_ _of me!”_

“Ah, Jack’s a sweetheart,” Sarah says, and that would be a compliment coming from anyone else, except he’s heard his mum describe rakks and skags as sweethearts before.

“Sarah, Jack is a _dick_ and doesn’t like me, you know he doesn’t,” Saul continues insisting, indignant at the lack of familial support from their quarter.

“Yes, okay, honey, whatever you say, go back to playing with your grenades now, I love you,” Sarah leans in to shut off the ECHO comm, Rhys waving at his dad as she does.

“ _So,”_ she says, looking smugly at Rhys. “Want to tell me about Jack now?”

Rhys huffs. “It’s _really_ nothing.” His mum reaches for the ECHO comm again and he hastens to correct himself. “Okay, _fine,_ we’re just, you know, having fun. It’s not _serious_ or anything.”

“But you _want_ it to be.” She looks at him, eyes searching, and whatever she sees on his face must confirm it for her. “Oh, sweetpea,” she sighs. “Jack’s a decent guy, charming as hell, damn fine at guns. A little crazy, but everyone in this business is. You know what he _isn’t?_ He’ll smile to your face, talk pretty with you, but Jack’s not a _good_ guy. He’ll betray anyone for the right price. You have to be _careful._ ”

Rhys looks away, jaw set. He exhales slowly. “I know.”

Shaking her head slightly, Sarah sets her tea aside, extending her hand across the table, palm upwards. He takes it, holding tight, and they sit together in silence for a few long minutes.

Sarah’s ECHO comm starts beeping, some new catastrophe requiring the CEO’s attention. She ignores it. “Okay, now, you hear me,” she tells him. “You go back to Helios, have yourself a _great_ time, and if Jack does anything, _anything_ out of line, your father and I will destroy him.”

Rhys nods, suddenly, fiercely grateful for his parents.

She slips her hand out from under his, brushing down her immaculately tailored, powder blue pantsuit. She leans forward to press a fond kiss to his forehead, scooping up her ECHO comm as she rounds the table. “I love you, dear, be good,” she says over her shoulder.

“I’ll try to be back again soon,” Rhys calls, and his mother waves in acknowledgement as she disappears past the rose garden to the entrance courtyard.

 

 

 

The journey back to Helios is long. It’s not as bad as his mum likes to suggest, but it’s a thirteen-hour shuttle ride, so it’s not something to sneeze at.

Still. There are worse ways to travel than your own private shuttle, so he’s not complaining. Much, at least.

Rhys can’t stop his leg from bouncing the whole ride over, pent-up impatience and nerves making him jittery. He’s been away from Helios for a week now, and he’s more antsy about leaving his projects unsupervised for so long than he’d like to admit.

And, well, being away from Jack.

The shuttle makes good time, and they dock at Helios in just under thirteen hours.

Tired, grumpy, and nerves shot to hell, Rhys irritably clicks his fingers at one of the shuttle crew to get his stuff and send it to his apartment. He knocks back what’s left of the in-flight coffee in his cup, standing and stretching to get the kinks out of his back.

Slinging his satchel on his shoulder and disembarking, he’s pretty surprised to see Jack waiting near the bay connecting doors, pacing and yelling into his ECHO comm at what Rhys guesses must be the unlucky flunky of the day. 

Jack spots him and waves him over, giving him an appreciative once over as he makes his way across the bay towards him.

“Took you long enough,” Jack says, and roughly yanks him in for a kiss by his shirt. It’s hot, it’s wet, it’s messy, it’s been a week, and Rhys is twenty-one, so his dick sits up and takes notice.

Breaking the kiss off, Rhys pulls back just far enough that he can _look_ at Jack. He looks the same as he did a week ago, obviously, but his manic energy, the raw intensity of his mismatched gaze, the cruel tilt of his lips - memory was a poor substitute.

“You never told me you’d toss me over for my mother if she were twenty years younger,” Rhys accuses.

“Eh, what can I say, I’ve got something for pretty Carvers,” Jack purrs, leaning to close what little space is between them even further. “Got you, though, don’t I?”

Turning to head for the lifts, Rhys sends him an unimpressed look, ECHO pad already out and in hand. “Don’t get cocky, Jack, I’m only on loan.” He flicks through reports from Hyperion R&D. “Okay, bring me up to speed on what a shitshow things have become since I left.”

They step into a lift, Jack explaining that Danvers had calibrated a whole set of guns wrongly, that they needed to hire new xenobiologists, that Wayne had accidentally shot himself in the hand.

The lift makes a sharp descent towards R&D in the lower half of Helios’ left tower, and Rhys watches levels and lights and space whiz by, only half paying attention to what Jack’s saying.

There’s an unsettling ball in the pit of his stomach, a brand new feeling in his gut he can’t put a name to. It sets his teeth on edge, makes him feel like a runner at the blocks, starting gun tauntingly not fired.

_He’ll betray anyone for the right price._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to try to update at least a couple of times weekly...hopefully. My draft outline is loooong, so hang on to your seats, this is going to be quite the ride.


End file.
